[HN Gopher] Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
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Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
Author : signa11
Score : 284 points
Date : 2023-12-19 03:30 UTC (19 hours ago)
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| ggm wrote:
| Although I am sympathetic overall, it really isn't about
| programmers, it's about anyone doing mental-flow work with focus.
| Open plan is for a different state of mind and product. It can be
| condusive to some good outcomes, but the cost is the loss of
| flow.
|
| Writers need flow. People studying need flow. I could imagine
| techs looking at breast cancer scans need flow. It isn't only
| programmers who need this.
| Terr_ wrote:
| In the same vein, an office with a door won't help at all if
| you have higher-ups who expects instant responses to any
| messaging/e-mail query every five minutes.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Agreed. Even back when I had my own single office I got
| interrupts all the time. And I need flow when programming.
| Every interrupt cleared the cache and I had to spend time
| building it up again.
|
| I used to work from another time zone for a few years. That
| was highly efficient. The first half of the working day there
| were no interrupts and I could go into the flow and be
| productive. The second half, or more like the last three
| hours I would have video meetings and back-and-forth emails
| etc. and just doing "normal" slow programming - not the type
| needing concentration and flow. People emailing me about
| stuff would do so when I was sleeping, and when I started
| working I could start by going through that, plan, start
| working, and have it ready for them when _they_ got up and
| began working. It was ideal, in many ways (except that I
| couldn 't physically drop by the office whenever I wanted).
| cauch wrote:
| Well, if you don't answer instantly, then you are stopping
| them in their flow.
|
| I've noticed this some times ago and now I cannot unsee it:
| this all discussion is too often about "what is best for me
| and my flow even if it ruins other people's flow" rather than
| discussing a proper solution.
| tzs wrote:
| I'm not sure you are talking about the same thing when you
| say "flow" that I think most of the other people are
| talking about when they say "flow".
|
| Flow as most are using it here, also known as being "in the
| zone", is when you achieve a deep state of focus on one
| particular task, and everything else seems to melt away.
| You reach maximal energy and enthusiasm for the work. It is
| where you reach peak productivity and creativity.
|
| Most people cannot just enter this state at will, and when
| they do achieve it cannot maintain it for more than an hour
| or two. Getting into this state takes 20 to 30 minutes or
| more.
|
| When you are in this state it takes very little to knock
| you out of it. A ringing phone, someone talking to you even
| if you just tell them to come back in a couple hours, a
| beep from a messaging app...all of those can knock you out
| of the zone.
|
| Getting back in after being knocked out takes another 20 to
| 30 minutes. This means that if you are getting one
| interruption or distraction every 30 minutes throughout
| your time at your desk it is unlikely that you will get any
| time in the zone.
|
| >> In the same vein, an office with a door won't help at
| all if you have higher-ups who expects instant responses to
| any messaging/e-mail query every five minutes
|
| > Well, if you don't answer instantly, then you are
| stopping them in their flow
|
| In the case of a manager interrupting you they probably
| weren't in the zone. But even if it is someone who was in
| the zone that is interrupting you them having to stop and
| message you was probably enough to knock them out of it.
|
| It will almost certainly be more productive for the
| organization overall for them to work on something else
| until you naturally exit the zone.
| cauch wrote:
| Hm, I think I have the same definition of flow.
|
| For example, you can be "in the zone", and then suddenly
| realise you need answer X than only John can provide. In
| the office, you can look at John and he does not look
| busy, so you quickly ask. Sometimes, people don't even
| realise they are asking, they are still in the zone,
| checking if John is available is done by another part of
| the brain. After the answer, you continue, you are still
| "in the zone", you still have everything you need in your
| head, you are still juggling with different variables,
| they are still there.
|
| Now, if you cannot ask directly, you have to send a
| message on Slack. And then what? Well, you cannot
| continue to work on the part you were working on. So you
| have to switch task, drop all of the variables you juggle
| with in your head, get out of the context you were in.
| Then John answers you on Slack 10 minutes later, you have
| to recollect everything in your mind.
|
| So, yes, that's my point, not being able to ask a quick
| question will destroy your flow. The effects are the same
| as being distracted by a question when you are "in the
| zone". I don't think that asking someone about something
| is enough to get out of the zone, as in practice,
| developers "ask" their computer or internet things
| continuously. A simple "ls" or "ctrl-f" is as disturbing
| as asking the colleague sitting next to you.
|
| Of course, it may depend on people, but I think it's just
| not a smart way to approach the problem as if everyone is
| always working exactly the same way you do.
|
| I also think that some people will think stuffs will
| break them out of the zone when it does not always really
| do, just because they don't even notice the thing
| happened when it does not. It is a bit like those people
| who say "I always wake up when the cat pass next to my
| window" just because the 5 times they woke up, the cat
| was indeed passing next to their window, but the cat
| passed there 50 times without waking them up.
| elzbardico wrote:
| This is the manager's or marketeers version of flow. It
| is not the kind of flow we're discussing here.
| k__ wrote:
| I worked in an office with 10 other people once.
|
| It worked well, as long as the other people were devs or admins
| who didn't phone all the time.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| The shittiest thing about going back to the office after the
| long WFH period has absolutely been the normalization of taking
| calls at your desk in the open office environment. At least
| before we had the mutual understanding that it's loud as it is
| and calls are to be taken in meeting rooms or anywhere else
| really.
| pocketarc wrote:
| I like to think that providing a team with private offices and
| all the old-school perks would help create a working environment
| where they'd feel more appreciated, and thus end up working
| better.
|
| If I ever hire a team that isn't remote, that'd be something I'd
| want to explore. That and giving them assistants. I want to find
| out what an experienced dev team that doesn't have to bother with
| any admin or other distractions can do.
|
| Freeing people up as much as possible to just think and build in
| peace. I like to think that it would make a difference.
| abathur wrote:
| This strikes me as very thoughtful, though I imagine I'd end up
| concerned about whether I was feeding said assistant
| sufficiently meaningful work...
|
| I _would_ love to have someone else sit in on meetings, but i
| suspect I 'm there in the hope that I'll ask an incisive
| question to shake a hidden requirement loose.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > That and giving them assistants. I want to find out what an
| experienced dev team that doesn't have to bother with any admin
| or other distractions can do.
|
| You can already do that with remote staff. Stuff like planning
| travels or dealing with reimbursement of expenses is almost
| always extremely annoying for those who only have to interface
| with the arcane systems twice a year.
| rzz3 wrote:
| But, why offices at all? All my productivity problems are solved
| by just working from home.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Well, yes. I used to have my own office, for most of my career.
| Then when we had to move offices there wasn't enough room for
| that, so now we have smaller or larger rooms with from a few to
| many people. In general I'm much less efficient when working
| like that (the only exception is when I, for specific purposes,
| join up with another person to do work in tandem with
| something. That can be highly efficient, but it's limited to
| just those specific cases). So that's one reason I use my home
| office most of the time. But it _is_ useful to meet up with the
| others once in a while (and not just by Teams), so after this
| morning working from home I 'm heading to the office for a few
| hours.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| This. I'm about to build a dev team next year, and my co-
| founder is kinda disappointed that I want them all completely
| remote. He's the old-school "let's have a big office where we
| can all get together" and I'm "let's not and say we did".
|
| I can see way down the line there'll be a problem with
| Engineering vs The Rest because we'll be remote and they'll be
| in an office. But tbh there is _always_ a problem with
| Engineering vs The Rest regardless.
|
| I want my devs to be able to switch Slack off, not answer
| emails, go for a walk in the park, and stare at the ceiling for
| hours while properly thinking about what they're building. Too
| much code is written in haste.
| skor wrote:
| may your project prosper.
|
| You sound like my current employer. Working for them the only
| worrying thing I ever think about is that I don't want this
| gig to end, ever.
| overflyer wrote:
| Have you guys ever thought about the fact that there are nerds
| that like so socialize and hate working from home, because it
| gets f'ing lonely after a while? I want to see people. The
| corona pandamic where I worked almost 2 years from home drove
| me into a severe depression.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Yes, I have a theory based on this. I think that roughly
| 40%-60% of developers prefer remote, the remainder prefer in-
| office. So if you mandate in-office, roughly half of your
| developers will be unhappy. If you go full-remote, again,
| roughly half of your developers will be unhappy. So what do
| you do? I think you have to pick one and stick with it. Over
| time, you'll collect people who prefer remote or in-office.
| It won't be easy, but doing "hybrid" is absolutely the wrong
| decision, that makes no one happy.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| The reason I like the office is mostly for the free food
| and events. I don't get much more out of my coworkers by
| being physically close to them. They don't like to be
| bugged (I don't either, usually). Maybe a little at lunch
| when I can pick their brains about random crap that doesn't
| warrant a meeting but not much.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I really believe your number is more like 80%. But yeah,
| the overall idea stands.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Have you ever thought about the fact many people like to work
| from home because it leaves more time to socialize with
| family and friends?
|
| Pandemic restrictions have ended. You could eat lunch with a
| neighbor who hates working from home also. Or rent shared
| working space.
| simmschi wrote:
| In my whole professional life (last 15y) there was not a single
| time where I had anything resembling a private space where I
| could just close the door and work in peace.
|
| The norm here in German startup world seem to be open floors. And
| if you do have rooms they get crammed full of people.
|
| It's not the end of the world though. A room full of engineers is
| tolerable, and if they're on your team this is even desirable.
|
| The trouble only comes when the CEO wants to see everyone
| sweating, so you get stuffed together with Sales or Ops.
|
| Working from home made things a lot easier though. And if the
| company is big enough it's usually also possible to just book a
| meeting room if you need to work in silence for a while :-)
| brailsafe wrote:
| > A room full of engineers is tolerable, and if they're on your
| team this is even desirable.
|
| Until one of the engineers who has no social awareness decides
| to eat at their desk instead of taking lunch elsewhere, or you
| just need some silent time and there's just no option for it.
|
| I'm very reluctantly pursuing on-site or hybrid positions as a
| last ditch (desperate) effort to find some work, and I'm not
| the slightest bit optimistic about being in a room full of
| anybody. I used to think an open room full of people was the
| better choice, but that was when I was young and naive. Serious
| focus demands control over your senses, and there's a
| difference between setting up at a bustling cafe and going in
| every day to sit directly adjacent to the same people with no
| concept of real private space.
| shiroiuma wrote:
| >Until one of the engineers who has no social awareness
| decides to eat at their desk instead of taking lunch
| elsewhere
|
| Maybe he's aware, and _just doesn 't care_ because the
| company has already made him miserable by 1) not having an
| "elsewhere" to take that lunch, and 2) putting his desk right
| next to the sales team.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Could very well be, in which case that would be even worse.
| Loughla wrote:
| >no social awareness decides to eat at their desk instead of
| taking lunch elsewhere
|
| What? How is eating your lunch at your desk a social
| awareness thing? If it doesn't smell and isn't loud, what's
| the problem?
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > If it doesn't smell
|
| I guess that's exactly the problem. The only food which
| doesn't smell is cold food.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Ya that's what I meant there. Someone who is both eating
| lunch at their desk and who lacks social awareness about
| the sounds and smells.
| brailsafe wrote:
| It requires social awareness to be conscientious of the
| fact that it might smell or produce noise. I'd wager that
| anyone who's worked in an open office and is sensitive to
| these things could attest to the prevalence of people who
| underestimate how often they chew with their mouth open,
| for example.
|
| In one case, an adjacent developer was bringing in hard-
| boiled eggs and cracking them against the edge of his desk
| while wearing headphones and chewing with his mouth open,
| while the smell of the eggs wafted over the 3ft to mine,
| and then he'd get started on the apples. He'd do this 3-5
| times a day, so needless to say I'm not enthusiastic about
| open offices. I did also awkwardly bring this up directly
| with him, but it's tricky to navigate a situation in which
| it's not just the food, but also the mouth sounds and
| occasional burps. If I did get a break from this specific
| person, it would just allow the sounds from everyone else
| eating chips or having conversations to be more prominent.
| By the time covid roled around, I was already burnt out
| from trying to compensate from all those things, and the
| respite I could have got from working at home just arrived
| too late to save me.
| collaborative wrote:
| >the CEO wants to see everyone sweating
|
| In all seriousness, sweating is the biggest factor for me. My
| clothes smell so much nicer ever since I began working from
| home
| lawgimenez wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway64787 wrote:
| >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?
| disambiguation wrote:
| Ever notice how the free range chicken tastes better?
| globular-toast wrote:
| We're always doing our jobs, even while we sleep! You can't
| switch off your brain (well I suppose you could try
| meditation).
| Quimoniz wrote:
| > Getting paid to waste time not doing your job
|
| Pretty much the definition of 90 % of all the meetings. Just
| putting on bluetooth earpieces and doing the laundry doesn't
| deduct the value of me hearing another round of very
| efficient 'cost savings' that they thought about somewhere up
| the chain or other administrative ideas.
| nightfly wrote:
| Instead of wasting time browsing news sites playing on your
| phone or just zoning out during downtime, actually being able
| to take a break and do something you care about instead is
| _awesome_
| lawgimenez wrote:
| I should mention that listening to heavy metal music very
| loud is my hobby. This is impossible in a work setting.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > Getting paid to waste time not doing your job
|
| You mean commuting? Getting commuting hours back each day
| allows you do to hobbies.
| charcircuit wrote:
| "Team" does not appear once in the article. I find open plans to
| be superior as it makes the team go faster. People can unblock
| others, people can stop others from wasting time, people can
| immediately work together to think about a problem. And for times
| where you want to just pump out code you can put some earbuds /
| headphones on and use body language to signal that you are in
| deep focus.
| willvarfar wrote:
| There's no one-size-fits all for people nor problems.
|
| I had great results working in 'team rooms' where people
| wheeled their cabinets in and out as they joined or left
| project-oriented teams. But I was young.
|
| The staffies all had separate offices then. And today, I find
| myself most productive for the company when able to shut myself
| away and think.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Use of the phrase "pump out code" tells me you don't understand
| the problem and makes me wonder if you've ever programmed
| anything nontrivial yourself.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > people can stop others from wasting time
|
| Workers policing other workers . . . the ideal office of the
| pre-COVID 21st century!
| charcircuit wrote:
| I am referring to stopping someone from investing time into
| an approach that will not work or is not a good idea. If
| someone spends a couple days working on something that just
| gets thrown away, that person wasted that time.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| I smell troll
| devn0ll wrote:
| Working from the office ONLY works when everyone else is working
| from home and I'm the only one there.
|
| At which point I might as well work from home, and sell the
| extraneous office space.
| nox100 wrote:
| 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 chat for me,
| and VC is too scheduled.
|
| * brainstorming. Same as above
|
| * getting a feeling for what everyone is up to
| Sure I can go read their notes but it's not the same. One happens
| by osmosis so zero effort, it just happens. The other requires
| scheduling time
|
| * feeling part of a team, working on the same thing.
| I don't feel connected to me team at all working from home. I
| feel no more connection to them then when I call my bank and talk
| to a banker. Nor do I feel any connection to sit at a coffee shop
| and work around others who are not on the same team.
|
| I get that others have different opinions and/or want to work
| from home. Me, I was lucky to work on things I wanted to work on
| with people who wanted to work on them (video games) for most of
| my career. It was super fun. It would not been even 5% as fun at
| home by myself.
| Tor3 wrote:
| All of that is fine, the problem is that most places with
| shared space will have people _not_ working on the same project
| in that room. Instead everybody is working on different
| projects, and they may be in Teams meetings and talking and
| talking about things with zero interest for you, and that can
| 't possibly be productive. Even worse if you're in an office
| with one guy constantly on the 'phone on customer support or
| whatnot..
| shiroiuma wrote:
| How about when they put the software team right next to the
| sales team?
|
| This is exactly the problem with open-plan offices: they
| always do really stupid stuff like this, putting mostly-quiet
| teams very close to very talkative and noisy teams, with no
| barrier between them. Then everyone wants to work from home
| where at least they won't be tormented by listening to the
| obnoxious sales guy yap on the phone all day and can have
| their pet keep them company.
| zeristor wrote:
| Did you have the head of sales ringing a bell for a sale
| every few hours too?
| jusssi wrote:
| To me, this seems like a positive problem.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think what ends up happening is that you sell a lot of
| stuff that gets steadily worse over time.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| Of course it is good, if the sales team succeeds. But it
| is bad if that means that the developers are unable to do
| their work.
| zeristor wrote:
| Depends how you feel about $NOISE
| ddol wrote:
| Airbnb was open plan (it still is, I'm just not there
| anymore). They also have an amazing Food team who would
| occasionally, randomly, bake treats for us (this is
| relevant, I promise).
|
| There was no sales bell, but there was an outage gong.
| Any time we had an outage affecting the "Book It" flow
| and revenue stopped flowing that gong rang out. Hearing
| the gong meant engineers would abruptly leave meetings or
| lunch to come help fix the issue.
|
| As we scaled and hit the limits of various systems we had
| periods where the gong rang out semi-regularly (a few
| times per month). These were hard times for engineers.
|
| Soon, engineering started to push back on Product
| requests, took the time to re-architect and build better
| systems, and calm was achieved. Months went by without
| hearing the gong ring out, then years passed. People
| joined the company and got promoted, never having heard
| it ring. Until one day in 2018.
|
| I was working near a pod of project managers, and I hear
| the gong. Like Pavlov's dog, it triggers an immediate
| wave of anxiety in me: something is very wrong. But my
| blissfully unaware PM colleagues have no idea, it's the
| first time they've ever heard the gong.
|
| One lady looks up from her laptop and asks: "oooh, did
| the Food team make cookies?"
| otteromkram wrote:
| Your former is a POS company. Glad you're out, but could
| you not advertise them? It's easy to just replace the
| name with, "the company I used to work at," no?
| kragen wrote:
| this kind of content-free hate has no place on hacker
| news
| olivermuty wrote:
| > asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat
| where I may not get an answer for hours.
|
| All your other points are fine. People are motivated by a mix
| of external and internal triggers, and you are clearly skewed
| to the external side.
|
| The thing I quoted is however why anyone geared towards the
| internal side of things will HATE to have to go to the office
| while you are there.
|
| Programming requires deliberate thought gathered slowly into a
| complex matrix in your head before it finds its way to the pc
| through your keyboard.
|
| Even though I am an extrovert through and through and strongly
| identify with the motivational aspects of being in an office,
| me not giving you an answer until an hour has gone probably
| means more overall productivity for the project than your
| instant unblocking at the office.
| cauch wrote:
| Isn't what you say contradictory?
|
| You are saying that devs need to stay "in the flow". But when
| you are in the flow and suddenly you have something that
| blocks you because you have a simple question, the best way
| to stay in the flow is to ask the question and get the answer
| immediately. If I have to quit my flow, go on slack, ask on
| slack, wait 10 minutes, then re-explain because the other
| person did not get it, then re-wait, ... my flow is ruined.
|
| What you are saying is, at the end of the day, when
| caricaturing a little bit, that you want _your_ flow to be
| maintained, but you are happy to destroy the flow of others.
| ath3nd wrote:
| If one requires interrupting 6 other people to maintain
| flow, it's probably a good idea to start phrasing
| (hyperbole intentional) it like:
|
| 'To keep my own flow, I need to destroy the flow of all my
| colleagues'
|
| And not:
|
| 'My colleagues destroy my flow when they can't babysit me
| and respond to my questions asap, how dare they'
|
| It's like driving and then going like: 'Gee, all these
| other drivers are sure in my way, I need them out of the
| road so I can get places'. Guess what buddy, they also
| gotta get places, so damn right follow the laws, wait for
| your turn patiently and you will get there when you get
| there. Your colleagues also have stuff to do, and the world
| doesn't revolve only around YOUR flow.
|
| So write down your questions and observations in a coherent
| list, stop pinging people one question at a time, or search
| harder in the docs provided that they exist, sometimes
| that's even better as a learning experience.
| cauch wrote:
| > If one requires interrupting 6 other people to maintain
| flow
|
| Where is this "6" coming from?
|
| Again:
|
| 1) You may be incapable of doing work when someone walks
| next to you, but this is not the case of a lot of people.
| It's like driving and then going like: 'Gee, when these
| cars are putting their blinking lights on and it is
| distracting me, they should all quickly park before I
| arrive'.
|
| 2) My flow is fine, thank you very much: I don't get
| distracted by people passing by AND I also rarely ask
| quick simple questions (people needs to understand my
| work rather than me needing to understand theirs). It's
| telling that you cannot conceive that someone may
| disagree with you without themselves participating to a
| caricatural behavior that you have in mind.
|
| 3) THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT: the world doesn't revolve
| only around anyone. If you are inconvenienced by
| something that is convenient by someone else, then,
| outside of your little person, THERE IS NO REASON TO
| CHANGE THAT. If situation A means that employee X gets
| 6/10 and employee Y gets 8/10, and if situation B means
| that employee X gets 8/10 and employee Y gets 6/10, then
| situations A and B are the same.
|
| 4) I know that your argument is that your inconvenience
| is huuuuuge and touch everyone in the office and that the
| benefice for the distractor is smaaaaal and that the
| distractor is a terrible human being that should be
| thrown in jail. That's what self-centered people tends to
| believe.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > 'Gee, when these cars are putting their blinking lights
| on and it is distracting me, they should all quickly park
| before I arrive'.
|
| No! Because the accepted thing is to use your turn
| signal, as it's acceptable to do some research on
| yourself before asking somebody, or try to keep your
| voice down in shared rooms, or to not tap people on the
| shoulder when they have indicated deep work (headphones).
|
| I am upset from people who DON't use their blinkers, who
| tap you on the shoulder while you have headphones, and
| who discuss Game of Thrones loudly next to you while you
| are trying to work, and I have every right to be. People
| like that make their lack or desire of understanding or
| following etiquette everybody else's problem. And that's
| not okay!
|
| The etiquette of new workers is to try to follow the
| onboarding documents, and the guidance from their
| assigned "buddy", and if something is missing, distill
| the questions they have and go over them with the
| "buddy". If that's what OP's post saying, fine. But I got
| the impression they simply like to ask questions cause
| it's more convenient for them. Let the company, however,
| use that as a learning and drag itself kicking and
| screaming to update their onboarding.
|
| > That's what self-centered people tends to believe.
|
| The people who don't use blinkers ARE the self centered
| people, making their hurry everybody else's problem. A
| person who asks questions can be doing so for many
| reasons: not complete documentation, getting bad
| understanding of something, wanting to clarify some info
| or to be in the same page as the team, etc.
|
| But if they do so incessantly, then there is a problem,
| and the problem shouldn't be simply solved by saying:
| "Yeah, just ask John, he's always available and ready to
| help". As senior devs and leads and VPs of Engineerings
| or CTOs, we should foster a place where most questions
| can be answered easily in a self service manner, and our
| meetings have clarity on at least the big picture stuff.
|
| If all that is already there, asking many questions all
| the time can rightfully be labeled a "disruption". In
| that situation, the person asking questions always makes
| their problem (not wanting to do some work themselves)
| the problem of everyone else, and that's what self
| centered people do. In much the same manner, people not
| using blinkers (illegal, by the way) make their refusal
| to follow rules everybody else's problem.
| cauch wrote:
| > ... as it's acceptable to do some research on yourself
| before asking somebody, or try to keep your voice down in
| shared rooms, or to not tap people on the shoulder when
| they have indicated deep work (headphones).
|
| Again, nobody is pretending that they want to do that.
|
| > I am upset from people who ...
|
| And I'm upset from them too. In fact, I'm upset from
| people who have childish behavior and ask other people to
| adapt to their needs. In this conversation, you call
| "toddler" someone who did not propose anything that
| corresponds to what upset you. You just work differently
| than this person, so you childishly reacted.
|
| You are clearly not better than people who don't se their
| blinkers or discuss Game of Thrones loudly: you also
| don't have considerations for the needs of others around
| you.
|
| As I've said in my first comment on this thread: what if
| someone is in their flow and just need a quick and simple
| answer to a quick and simple question. You call these
| people "toddler" even if they will never ask someone they
| know does not like to be disturbed.
|
| > But if they do so incessantly
|
| Who is proposing that they do it incessantly?
|
| All I'm saying is that when A needs to ask a question and
| get an answer immediately and B needs to not be
| distracted, both to keep their flow, then, logically,
| there is no solution where someone doesn't lose their
| flow. And my point is that you act as if someone here has
| more right to their flow than the other, which is just
| self-centered childishness.
|
| > and the problem shouldn't be simply solved by saying:
| "Yeah, just ask John, he's always available and ready to
| help".
|
| Should it be solved by "if you have a simple and quick
| question and Jack told you several time that he loves
| answering these questions and that you should not
| hesitate, you NEED to book a meeting, otherwise,
| according to ath3nd, you are a toddler"?
|
| > If all that is already there, asking many questions all
| the time can rightfully be labeled a "disruption".
|
| WHO IS SAYING INCESSANT QUESTIONS IS NOT A DISRUPTION?
|
| This is very simple:
|
| yes, incessant not pragmatically useful questions is
| disrupting, and people who do that are self-centered.
|
| yes, asking people to "book meetings" or "write a message
| and wait hours before getting the simple unblocking
| answer" is disrupting, and people who do that are self-
| centered.
|
| Just be a grown-up and accept that, no, people have no
| reason to cater to your little comfort. Someone tap you
| on your shoulder when you hear your headphone? Though
| sh*t little baby! Are you really arguing that these
| people are the problem when you are the one not able to
| deal with that. There, a little trick to you: "hm, John,
| next time, maybe you can ...", and problem solved (and if
| John does it again, guess what: WE ALL HAVE THESE KIND OF
| PEOPLE IN OUR LIFE, you are not special enough that the
| human condition should not apply to you. And based on you
| calling "toddler" someone while not even saying anything
| bad, I'm pretty sure you are the "John" of someone else)
| ath3nd wrote:
| > WE ALL HAVE THESE KIND OF PEOPLE IN OUR LIFE, you are
| not special enough that the human condition should not
| apply to you.
|
| And I (and most other people in this thread) am fed up
| with them and trying to actively remove them from my
| life. Hence, when people suggest I should deal with it, I
| tell them that I will most certainly not deal with it.
| That there are things that can be done to make their and
| mine life easier.
|
| There are people who put their soda cans on the ground,
| there are people who talk loudly in the train, there are
| people who park their cars wrongly. Yes, it's a mild
| inconvenience. But I won't be dealing with it and accept
| it, I will actively shame them for the spoiled babies
| that they are, making a spectacle of their needs and
| accepting everybody to cater to them.
| Follow.Societal.Rules or get out of society!
|
| > Just be a grown-up and accept that, no, people have no
| reason to cater to your little comfort
|
| Me putting out all possible social clues that I don't
| want to be asked questions at the moment is not people
| catering for my comfort. It's people going through my
| boundaries so they can get their little comforts
| themselves.
|
| > Are you really arguing that these people are the
| problem when you are the one not able to deal with that.
|
| Yes, because they are breaking established social norms
| and work etiquette. I have clearly indicated by wearing
| headphones that it's not the time to be asked questions
| and I have indicated what's the best possible way for me
| to be asked questions: email, slack, a scheduled meeting,
| and many questions in bulk.
|
| I most certainly will not cater to how somebody prefers
| to ask ME questions just because it's more convenient for
| them to do it ad-hoc. The same way developers of open
| source want you to use THEIR issue tracker, and fill
| THEIR code of conduct, and follow THEIR coding
| guidelines, and not you doing whatever the heck you want.
|
| If you want something from somebody (like information),
| better follow their preferred approach of how to be
| asked, and not act like a spoiled little baby when you
| are told NO.
| cauch wrote:
| > And I (and most other people in this thread) am fed up
| with them and trying to actively remove them from my
| life.
|
| And OP does that too, but suddenly, when OP does that,
| they are a toddler, but when you do it, it's fine.
|
| > There are people who put their soda cans on the ground,
| there are people who ...
|
| and there are people who will call "toddler" people who
| have just a different way of working and are not imposing
| nothing bad to anybody else.
|
| > Me putting out all possible social clues that I don't
| want to be asked questions at the moment is not people
| catering for my comfort. It's people going through my
| boundaries so they can get their little comforts
| themselves.
|
| Again, the person YOU called a "toddler" has done nothing
| wrong. YOU are the toxic person who jumped on the
| conclusion that just because they have a different way of
| working, they will "ask you incessant questions even
| after I've said it's not how I work".
|
| It is very very difficult to believe that you are not a
| little baby just after you acted like a little baby when
| no one proposed anything that has any negative impact on
| you.
|
| > because they are breaking established social norms and
| work etiquette.
|
| Breaking established social norms and work etiquette is
| one thing. Throwing a tantrum because someone has broken
| established social norms and work etiquette is something
| else.
|
| Personally, I would say that the socially handicap person
| that get upset because someone tap them on their shoulder
| is the one who is breaking the established social norms
| and work etiquette: socially, the etiquette at work is to
| try our best to get along, even when the person in front
| does not deserve it (I dislike this norm, but it exists).
|
| > I most certainly will not cater to how somebody prefers
| to ask ME questions just because it's more convenient for
| them to do it ad-hoc.
|
| Let me use an as stupid and as caricatural view as you
| here:
|
| I most certainly will not cater to how ath3nd prefers to
| be communicated to just because they are incapable to
| provide proper onboarding and proper documentation. If
| someone tap you on your shoulder, it is because you are
| not able to do your job. Why someone will have to adapt
| to your failure?
|
| End of the caricature view, now something more
| meaningful: you deserve to be communicated with in a way
| that is respectful of your needs and ways of working. BUT
| you need to respect others people needs and ways of
| working too and accept that sometimes they will not read
| your mind.
|
| You keep coming back to the caricatural picture of
| someone asking incessant questions after you explain them
| your way of working. As I've said, these people are
| disturbing and we should not cater for their childish
| behavior. The problem is that you are treating EVERYONE
| that way (as proof is you treating OP as a "toddler" when
| OP did not show at all any behavior you complain about
| here), and it makes you a child also.
|
| As already said, 2 things can be true at the same time:
| 1) people asking incessant questions are toddler, 2)
| ath3nd is a toddler.
|
| > If you want something from somebody (like information),
| better follow their preferred approach of how to be
| asked, and not act like a spoiled little baby when you
| are told NO.
|
| You are talking about people who will say "NO" because
| they have been tapped on the shoulder. Who is the baby
| here?
|
| Again, we are talking about tapping someone on the
| shoulder _once_, and not doing it again if you explain
| you don't like it. You are just a grumpy baby, the
| existence of other babies will not change that.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If the majority of people are babies about an issue, then
| perhaps you should start running a nursery.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > Again, we are talking about tapping someone on the
| shoulder _once_, and not doing it again if you explain
| you don't like it.
|
| I don't think I should be touched in the first place. I
| have put a clear signal that I am deeply working:
| headphones. The accepted social norm is NOT to bother
| somebody when they have indicated they don't want to be
| bothered. I am, of course, going to answer the questions,
| but can't you simply wait until I indicate I am ready to
| accept your questions?
|
| The benefit of remote here is palpable: you simply don't
| have the option to tap me on the shoulder, and you can
| only call me (in which case it's important enough to
| call), write me an email (which forces you to have a
| coherent point, and I can respond to it later) or slack
| me (which, again, I can postpone for later).
|
| > You are just a grumpy baby, the existence of other
| babies will not change that.
|
| I don't know about babies, but do you know who doesn't
| like being said "NO" to and who throws a fit ever time
| when somebody expresses a boundary? Bullies! People who
| gets upset when you express a boundary and expect that
| you should just submit to THEIR way of answering, those
| are the real babies!
|
| Occasionally asking questions (for which it doesn't
| matter whether it's office or remote) is okay, especially
| when starting your job. On the other hand, expecting
| others to be readily available for your ad hoc queries
| repeatedly, day in and out, trying to actively persuade
| them that it's okay, and guilt trip them to continue
| doing so because it's "their work duty", and throwing a
| fit when people express a boundary to you, that's what
| real babies are made from!
|
| Learn to ask questions like a decent worker, batch them,
| write them down, and with as little disruption as
| possible, and don't bother people who are deeply focused.
| Your question can wait, the world doesn't revolve around
| you, and value your coworkers time! I won't back down
| from this!
| cauch wrote:
| What are you talking about?
|
| OP said "asking quick questions and getting an instant
| answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours"
|
| It's ALL they have said.
|
| They did NOT said they will "touch your shoulder", they
| did NOT said they will "interrupt you when you clearly
| don't want to be interrupted", they did NOT said they
| will "interrupt you after you made clear you don't like
| working like that", they did NOT said they will "ask
| incessant questions that are easily found in the doc",
| they did NOT said they will "ask you to answer day in day
| out", they did NOT said they will "guilt trip you to do
| something obviously unreasonable", ...
|
| And, YOU, YOU called them "toddler". YOU DID THAT. If now
| you are changing the goal post to "people who guilt trip
| other people are not nice", yeah, everyone agrees with
| that, but WHY DID YOU CALL OP TODDLER?
|
| WHY
|
| DID
|
| YOU
|
| CALL
|
| OP
|
| TODDLER?
|
| What is the thing that OP have said (really said, not
| something in your mind) that according to you is not
| compatible with a respectful and sane work relationship?
|
| > who doesn't like being said "NO" to and who throws a
| fit ever time when somebody expresses a boundary?
|
| Yep.
|
| Me: your colleague needs to work, if they are blocked by
| something that can be easily solved with a simple quick
| question and that they are being reasonable with their
| requests, they should be authorized to just ask you. They
| should not have to walk on egg shells to cater for ath3nd
| social inabilities, it's not their work, it's not their
| mental charge on their shoulders, there are boundaries.
|
| You: NO, they should just submit to MY way of being asked
| a question.
|
| The situation is EXTREMELY SIMPLE: just don't be a prick.
| You and everyone else.
|
| Don't ask incessant questions.
|
| But also, don't ask people to care for your fragile
| person who is not able to get one or two questions a day
| that will help everyone progress.
|
| Not liking question is fine. Just act like an adult about
| it: discuss and tell them. Don't jump on the first person
| who passes and says "I find quick question convenient"
| and yield "well then you are a toddler" without even
| knowing if this person is a prick or not.
|
| ALL your explanations, ALL OF THEM, they are ALL about
| YOU, YOU, YOU. You only present situation when you are
| reasonable and when the interlocutor is a prick. Yes, we
| know, incessant questions are disruptive (daaaah, it's
| obvious). But there is more than one way to be a prick.
| One other way is to be a self-centered idiot who is
| incapable to help the team because they view everything
| into distorting glasses (like when you call OP "toddler"
| for behavior they never had) or because they view their
| work relationship in a competitive way instead of
| collaborative (like when you say that the person who ask
| the question "owns" something to the person who has the
| knowledge)
| Buttons840 wrote:
| If Alice wants to focus on her work uninterrupted, but
| Bob wants to interrupt and ask a question, what should
| happen?
| cauch wrote:
| That's exactly the question.
|
| My solution is: Bob should try to ask with moderation,
| and Bob and Alice should work together in a situation
| where Bob does not need to distract Alice. If Bob needs
| to distract Alice, then Alice just needs to live with it.
| If Bob has questions but does not need to distract Alice,
| then Bob should not ask the question and just needs to
| live with it.
|
| What confuse me is that some people here just answer:
| obviously Alice is right and Bob is wrong, all the time
| except exceptional cases.
| ath3nd wrote:
| I believe we should examine why Bob needs to distract
| Alice on a regular basis, and attack that problem with
| the might and fury of 1911 raging bulls and 420
| mosquitoes.
|
| > What confuse me is that some people here just answer:
| obviously Alice is right and Bob is wrong, all the time
| except exceptional cases.
|
| Joking aside, I do agree with your point. It's not black
| and white and there shouldn't be fear/hostility connected
| with simply asking a question. However, 100% being open
| to questions all the time is simply disruptive for
| everybody.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| If I was Alice's employer and valued her (and other
| employees) being able to do deep work, I'd have a policy
| whereby employees could schedule do-not-disturb time
| (large blocks of it, depending on their needs) where they
| could shut their doors and turn off IM. Have a red light
| on the outside of the door, like a film production booth.
| Book end the day. First 1-2 hours are disturb time.
| Middle of the day is DND time. Last part of the day is
| disturb time.
|
| All scheduled meetings have to happen in disturb time.
|
| Now, that doesn't really work for a customer-facing role,
| at least not without the cooperation of your customers,
| but having managed a customer-facing team before, I'll
| say I encouraged my people to schedule office-hour time
| with their customers to try to channel the interactions
| in a more predictable period of time.
| cevn wrote:
| Email
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| ...Don't check it during your DND time...
|
| ...Set an expectation that the turnaround time for an
| email response is 24 hours...
| mathgeek wrote:
| The "6" is coming from the original comment in the
| thread.
| cauch wrote:
| there are 6 people in the room, but as I said, it does
| not mean that the 6 persons are all distracted. (by the
| way, the initial comment was implying that the question
| is coming from one of the 6 persons in the room, so at
| worst, it's 5 persons distracted)
|
| the question can also be useful for one other person in
| the room, so instead of being distracted, the person has
| been helped.
| mathgeek wrote:
| No worries. Was just answering your question.
| AceyMan wrote:
| In my experience, the typical picnic table sized open-
| plan/hotdesk furniture usually seats six (three per long
| side) so, in practice, six people seems like the most
| common group sizing.
| plagiarist wrote:
| If the question is truly simple it can probably be answered
| by the codebase or the internet. Otherwise the flow is
| ruined anyway when you stop it to ask someone in person.
| One has to load the context that was subconscious into the
| foreground for explanation of why they're asking.
|
| Instead you want to interrupt your own flow as well as that
| of others to get immediate feedback on simple issues?
|
| Your last sentence is incredible. No, I don't want my own
| flow to be preserved at the expense of others'. That's why
| I ask async and do something else while I wait for them to
| be free. But neither should I be a necessary component of
| someone else's flow at the expense of my own.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > The thing I quoted is however why anyone geared towards the
| internal side of things will HATE to have to go to the office
| while you are there.
|
| That's really not that obvious. Things like this (being able
| to ask questions) and allowing other people to focus when
| they need are not incompatible.
|
| It should be pretty easy to infer for most people whether
| it's a good time to start a conversation with another person
| or maybe you should wait for a few minutes/hours/until the
| lunch break/whatever
| matsemann wrote:
| I agree. If I have a personal office I might as well sit at
| home.
|
| I hate open office space as much as the next person, but small
| team rooms are great. Can have the walls plastered with post-
| its, screens, drawing boards etc. If I hear two coworkers
| discuss something, I can chip in if relevant. Information flow
| just happens by itself.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| * i dont want to hear your quick questions
|
| * i dont want to be connected with you, get a life
|
| Let me work
| matsemann wrote:
| I never understand this. Why being so focused on work, to the
| detriment of building some relationships with the people you
| work with? Is this a HN/spectrum thing? Or capitalism-simping
| where people aspire to be robot-workers with no humanity? Why
| not enjoy your time at work? After all, you're spending 8
| hours there a day, and see those people almost as much as
| your spouse, and probably more than your friends.
| Matumio wrote:
| The second reason. Companies that are worse at getting
| people to self-exploit tend to do worse financially, and
| thus tend to disappear. Of course, if too many people quit
| or burn out, then the company will go bust, too. The
| optimum will be just one step short of that. And whenever
| someone starts a new company, they will look at the
| existing successful companies for how things are done.
|
| There is no evil master plan. The processes that lead to
| self-exploitation will sound reasonable and well-intended.
| (If this wasn't the case, people would refuse to adapt it.
| Most people don't like exploitation when they see it.)
|
| For example, in most of Europe there is a law that requires
| employees to record their working hours. This law was
| created to prevent (unpaid) overtime, and it does that. Now
| company X implements this by making you write down how many
| hours each day you worked towards which task. Doing this
| every day makes you think where you put this one-hour chat
| you had with a co-worker. It was nice, but which task did
| it contribute to? (It didn't...?) If you bother to ask,
| everybody will actually encourage you to have those talks,
| that it is even in the interest of healthy company culture,
| and remind you that maybe it's part of the paid break (you
| didn't forget you have that, did you? it was never anyone's
| intention that you skip your break). Nobody will be
| responsible for nudging people towards efficiency. It's all
| the fault of the individual who feels pressured into
| efficiency. It was never anyone's intention to prevent you
| from having those occasional nice chats, and nobody will
| stop you if you keep doing it.
|
| Still, every day you get to think about how long it took
| and which task it belongs to, and it feels a bit like lying
| to just add the time to a random task. This kind of habit
| can shape your thinking.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm not at work to make friends, but also being connected to
| the people around you who you are spending 8+ hours a day
| with is important, I believe. What happens when you need
| something? Relationships ease communication, and reduce the
| chances of miscommunication.
|
| Do you just want to sit in silence all day making money for
| the company? Do you never need to blow off steam? Do you
| never need help?
|
| > i dont want to hear your quick questions
|
| I'm not trying to be hateful with this next sentence, but I
| struggle to even understand who would act like this, and for
| what reason that isn't a diagnosis.
| Roark66 wrote:
| >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).
|
| I wonder how many of these remaining 5 people have a take
| similar to me. WFH is where I'm most productive and most happy
| to work. Doing the kind of work you describe above "with 6
| people on one project" is for 90% of the time an exercise in
| babying the least up to speed team member at the cost of
| distracting everyone.
|
| I get it, some people just like being around people and doing
| stuff "together", and some types of work may even benefit from
| that when stars align(brainstorming etc). Most types of work I
| do in software don't. Especially now, post covid when WFH
| became normalised and people who were opposed to it on various
| grounds were forced to learn how to use it effectively.
|
| >* asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs
| chat where I may not get an answer for hours.
|
| That's what the phone is for, with additional benefit of status
| from everyone. If I see someone is busy I don't phone them I
| look for someone else, If I see they are "green" I do and I get
| my answer instantly without disturbing anyone.
|
| >running ideas by others. This doesn't happen on chat for me,
| and VC is too scheduled
|
| Again, same thing. Pick up a phone. If you just want to run
| something "by everyone". Wait for your daily/weekly team
| meeting and ask then. Yes, it forces you to write ideas down
| not to forget them (if they can wait), but it's massively more
| convenient to everyone else.
|
| > * brainstorming. Same as above
|
| I had many a good brainstorming session online (mostly with
| voice). What do you need to accomplish it is: - good audio
| equipment, Internet access and a quiet location for everyone.
| No calling into a meeting "from my car, while going to the
| doctor", or "from the office while people are talking in the
| background", no "crappy headphones etc". All this ruins
| productivity for everyone. If people are using cameras(which is
| nice) everyone has to have the bandwidth for it. Also if you
| have more than 5 people in your meeting, make use of the "raise
| hand" feature. Then brainstorming can happen very well.
| Especially while looking at a document/whiteboard together with
| systems that show you in real time what everyone does.
|
| In fact above a certain number of people (8 maybe)
| brainstorming sessions seem a lot more effective to me online
| than in person. Why? Because you have few communication
| channels. You have the shared whiteboard/document, voice, and
| chat so while someone is talking you can post a question to the
| chat without interrupting.
|
| >getting a feeling for what everyone is up to
|
| That's what regular planning meeting is for.
|
| >feeling part of a team, working on the same thing
|
| I suppose that's a personal thing, but I always felt that
| including during my 7 years of WFH 100%.
|
| Edit: there is only one real disadvantage to WFH, and it's for
| junior people wanting to learn. It's much harder to gather
| knowledge by osmosis, just by being in the office if most
| senior people are WFH. But then as a leader one has to decide
| what is more important.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Phone? I'd always leave my status as do not disturb then. I
| don't know when I'm about to enter a state of productivity.
| Only once in a blue moon do I spin around in my chair quietly
| asking someone to come bug me because I'm bored/don't have
| anything fun to work on.
| stby wrote:
| I can only second this. I honestly had the best time of my
| (professional) life when I had a little room with the rest of
| my team.
|
| Asking quick questions in such an environment is also not that
| much of a disturbance because most people are working on
| similar features at the moment and there's a high chance that
| they don't need to do the whole context switch to assist you.
| It's really highly productive.
|
| For the times where you really needed some time for yourself,
| headphones work just fine. I wouldn't want to wear them all the
| time as even the best ones become uncomfortable after few
| hours, but that's also not really needed in a small shared
| room.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| That's so different from my work. I work in a team of about
| 30 people on 1 feature of a very popular app. None of us are
| working on the same thing at any given time. Most projects
| have 1 person that works on it or knows how it works. It's
| sad and isolating. And the company forces this culture by
| virtue of how promo works.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Asking quick questions in such an environment is also not
| that much of a disturbance because most people are working on
| similar features at the moment and there's a high chance that
| they don't need to do the whole context switch to assist you.
|
| This is untrue for even small teams in my experience.
|
| > For the times where you really needed some time for
| yourself, headphones work just fine.
|
| Also not my experience.
| glimshe wrote:
| I'm glad you like it. Let's just all remember that other people
| feel differently and will be productive in very different
| circumstances. I don't need to feel very connected to the team,
| they are just business partners who are trading their time for
| money. If we can be friendly, that's awesome, but I'd much
| rather be connected to my family.
|
| Personally, I've experienced open office, fully private office
| etc. Private office/remote are my favorites, followed by small
| room with a few people (I also had that in the gaming industry,
| it wasn't too bad) and, in a distant and humiliating last
| place, open office.
| broast wrote:
| I always find it surprising that so many people struggle to
| make effective human connections over chat. I think it must be
| generational, as I believe these are the connections I and
| other young people prefer.
| h0h0h0h0111 wrote:
| I've also never had particular problems making connections
| over chat (I'm not old and not young); particularly in
| companies where I've had a chance to meet people in person
| even once or twice, I've found online communication no
| problem at all
| dijit wrote:
| Once you have a solid foundation, text chat is almost as easy
| at maintaining that connection as in person conversation.
|
| Making that solid foundation requires a lot of work though
| and not everyone has the communication (or empathy) skills to
| make it work.
|
| Has worked for me, but I'm an outlier in that I grew up on
| IRC chatrooms before more rich-text and composite media
| communication methods were available.
|
| Most people on _this site_ in particular are likely to be
| outliers too: as the way we are communicating right now is as
| stripped down as possible and people will self-select for
| this.
| creakingstairs wrote:
| I've made numerous friends over IRCs, Warcraft 3 chat
| channels and whatnot and had preferred it over face-to-face
| (and I still prefer chat over zoom calls!) but as I've gotten
| older, I started appreciating talking in real life more and
| more, and now struggle to form connections over chat. I
| wonder if there are others who are in the same boat.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You cannot compare an open chat, with a strong interest in
| a particular topic vs you team's Slack channel.
|
| Online games work well, because you have a visual and full
| engagement.
|
| Compare that to work communications... You are totally
| async on slack, it's just a simpler version of email at
| this point. Just because people are online in Slack today,
| doesn't mean that they'll respond within minutes.
|
| If someone is online playing a game, you know that they're
| there. Old IRC was pretty much the same.
| dboreham wrote:
| Old person here, been using some form of chat since 1984 (The
| talk command on VMS).
| bitzun wrote:
| You'll need a new theory. I've worked with two late
| millenial/gen-z developers who couldn't hold up a slack
| conversation to save their lives, so we went to zoom very
| quickly when they needed anything.
| v-erne wrote:
| And I struggle to understand how can you make any real
| connections without seeing and hearing other person. There is
| so much communication hidden in body language and voice that
| for me any kind of text communication is just poor
| substitute. And I am not even extrovert that loves
| interaction with others (rather the opposite) and still know
| this intuitively to be true.
| achenet wrote:
| I think the key part of that is _working on the same thing_.
|
| I work in a large company, and team is spread out over multiple
| cities.
|
| We actually will often to group video calls to have a similar
| thing to what you describe - being able to ask a quick
| question, run ideas by other, etc.
|
| However, going to the office I'm just with people who are
| working on different things, often doing calls which I find
| distracting...
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| When I was junior I shared an office with a senior. I was
| _constantly_ asking him questions. He pretty much knew
| everything, I 'm not kidding, this guy was amazing. So this
| arrangement worked out really well for me, but not sure how
| much he liked having his work interrupted so much. Could be
| that between the two of us, the benefits averaged out to zero.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| This is where headphones can help. Headphones on, don't
| bother the person or only chat.
|
| That was an unwritten rule the last time I worked in an open
| space.
| nprateem wrote:
| This is the way
| rightbyte wrote:
| About half at my last job always had headphones on to be
| able to concentrate.
| tzs wrote:
| 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:
| +---------+---------+ | | | |
| | | +-----+ -+- +-----+ |
| | | | | | +-----+ +-----+
| | | | | | | +-----+
| +-----+ | | | | | |
| +-------| |-------+
|
| Each office had floor to ceiling walls, with a door and a large
| window. Need to be left along to do some deep work or deep
| thinking? Close your door. Want to be more sociable? Open your
| door. Put nice chairs or small sofas in the common area in the
| middle so people can hang out there when not doing something
| that requires being at their computer (e.g., reading printed
| documentation).
|
| The larger offices at the top can be used for more senior
| people, or the group manager, or for a lab, or a library, or a
| break room.
|
| You could extend this to two teams working on different
| projects but under a common manager or senior engineer by
| putting them in separate clusters side by side, and merging the
| adjacent top offices so that the common manager or senior
| engineer's office is part of both clusters:
| +---------+---------+---------+---------+ | |
| | | | | | |
| +-----+ -+- +-----+-----+ -+- +-----+ |
| | | | | | | | |
| | +-----+ +-----+-----+ +-----+ | |
| | | | | |
| | +-----+ +-----+-----+ +-----+ | |
| | | | | | | |
| | +-------| |-------+-------| |-------+
|
| What we were doing was video games for early consoles, mostly
| Mattel Intellivision but later also for Atari VCS, and also
| later for the Commodore VIC-20 computer. That kind of work
| required a mix of brainstorming and collaboration with periods
| where you really need to concentrate without being disturbed to
| figure out how to actually make it work on the hardware (weird
| processor, weird graphics chip, under 200 bytes of RAM
| (although later cartridges could have RAM which allowed some
| games to have more), a couple K ROM, and all programmed in
| assembly language). That office layout supported that quite
| well.
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| I had the privilege of designing a small 4 office space
| exactly like this for our small bioinformatics developer
| core. It was beautiful and worked very well. Then the
| company's legal department decided Legal would benefit more
| from it and kicked us out. It goes back to how much a company
| values its developers.
| notbeuller wrote:
| This is the best. Offices with doors, as a semaphore for
| availability, and a close by common area for collaboration.
|
| If collaboration occurs spontaneously and your door isn't
| closed, it's easy to join in. If it turns out that someone is
| essential, turn it into an actual design meeting.
|
| The best teams I've worked on had this arrangement and
| developed their own cadence - morning walks for cofeee, water
| cooler tv show commonalities.
|
| Having the refuge of a known private space made group
| participation easier - I would seek out and benefit from the
| social technical in person interactions, as opposed to an
| open office plan where I would start out with determination
| of defending my personal mental space at all costs.
| closeparen wrote:
| This layout seems common for graduate student offices in
| academic buildings. I was jealous.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Demanding an instant answer is often a burden to teammates. If
| they have spare time to answer they will answer in chat. Be
| patience and be respectful to working routines of other people.
| junon wrote:
| > Why do <demographic> need/want <subjective thing>?
|
| I'm starting to consider these sorts of low-effort, divisive
| titles as click bait these days.
| ImaCake wrote:
| The internet repeats itself a lot. If you want truly novel and
| thoughtful content you will want to turn to books. Audiobooks
| are fine, so are obscure technical corners of the web, what you
| want is the deep and expert content that is not surfaced in the
| short feedback loops of the internet.
| qayxc wrote:
| The article oversimplifies things a little, IMHO.
|
| It's not the open floor plan office that's the main cause of the
| problem for DnD type work, nor are offices with doors a general
| solution.
|
| It's all about policy. A separate office with a door doesn't do
| you any good if every ten minutes someone drops by to knock on
| it. A private office also doesn't help if you're constantly
| bombarded with "urgent" messages from various people and are
| expected to instantly reply.
|
| Most of the issues can be solved by simply implementing
| reasonable policies. Can't deal with the noise of an open plan
| office? Provide ANC headphones. Need time to focus? Define
| binding "focus hours" each day during which no meetings are
| scheduled, no messages are sent, and people are left alone. Keep
| the inevitable exceptions to an absolute minimum.
|
| In addition to that, it also helps to have separated spaces (e.g.
| meeting rooms) available that can be booked for DnD sessions if
| the need arises.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I always see noise cancelling headphones put forward as a
| solution to noisy office environments . . . I don't want to
| wear headphones. I don't want to be cut off in my own bubble. I
| want to be connected to my environment, and I want it to be a
| nice place to get my work done.
| cauch wrote:
| And some people don't want to stop interacting just to cater
| to you, and some people want you to answer their question
| immediately so they don't break their flow.
|
| And I have sometimes seen people saying things similar to
| you, and then being loud or distracting when it was more
| convenient for them.
|
| I understand your position, but as usual with these
| discussion, everything seems to always centered about "what I
| would prefer" rather than trying to understand everyone's
| needs.
| qayxc wrote:
| It's not _the_ solution (plus they have an "aware"-mode that
| doesn't shut you off completely), it's _a_ possible solution
| and a rather simple and cheap one at that.
|
| Depending on the circumstances it isn't always possible to
| provide a work environment that everyone considers to be a
| "nice place to get work done". Some people don't mind
| background chatter, others can't concentrate if someone as
| much as coughs somewhere.
|
| It's also a bit hard to not being being cut off in your own
| bubble as you put it, while simultaneously wanting to be
| connected to everyone else. Being in a separate, single desk
| office is no different from being in a bubble in that sense.
| rightbyte wrote:
| DnD? I can't not read Dungeons and Dragons. Debug and develop?
| klausa wrote:
| Do not Disturb.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > Can't deal with the noise of an open plan office? Provide ANC
| headphones.
|
| Company-issued PPE for hazardous offices?
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Once someone scheduled a meeting with me on focus Friday. So
| uncool. I almost declined.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Not to create too much of a political tangent, but the lack of
| private offices, or rather _the ubiquitous mandatory nature of
| open offices_ , and its universal unpopularity with non-managers,
| is evidence imo that tech could use a union or professional
| association or guild or _something_.
|
| Oh sure you can talk about high comp and career mobility. But
| where does all of the vaunted labor power of software engineers
| go when they ask for something as simple as a cubicle?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| 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.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| 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 to this. I already mentioned alternatives. Maybe
| there should just be more general participation in the
| ACM/IEEE and give it lobbying power. But the principle is
| that _some_ sort of collective action seems to be in order,
| because there's collective disgruntlement, yet the issue is
| still unaddressed.
| azangru wrote:
| Judging by the comments here, nobody is doing pair programming /
| mob programming?
| BossingAround wrote:
| Nobody is doing pair programming / mob programming. At best,
| some people are talking that it might be interesting to do.
| globular-toast wrote:
| There are people who dream that programming looks like "team
| working programming" stock images[0]. I've no idea why they
| want this to be true but it wouldn't be the first time people
| have tried to force others into their bizarre dreams.
|
| [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=team+working+programming&iar=im
| age...
| spike021 wrote:
| My team is fully remote and we definitely do pair programming
| from time to time. Not so much mob programming as much as mob
| code review on occasion to understand significant code changes
| and their related decisions.
|
| But not nearly to the degree as my old job pre-pandemic that
| was roughly 3 days a week all in the office and 2 days a week
| whatever you wanted.
| baz00 wrote:
| I don't think pair programming exists in reality. It is talked
| about a lot.
|
| Pair debugging _does exist_ but only when stuff goes wrong.
| This is the vain hope that perhaps two people can make up one
| competent person when the shit has hit the fan.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And quite often pair programming could be done by single
| programmer and inanimate object.
|
| Still. It does often work, specially if the other person has
| better knowledge of technology or code in question.
| cebert wrote:
| You can do pair programming/debugging great remotely with
| VSCode or Visual Studio live share.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Mob programming is so easier in a call with shared desktops
| that at the beginning of the pandemics when we were wondering
| how we would work after people returned I was pushing for we
| never do it in a conference room again.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| I can't even imagine creating my own ideas while someone in my
| personal space is talking. At best I can only sanity check his
| ideas.
| ath3nd wrote:
| People like you are the reason I personally don't want to be in
| an office.
|
| > asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat
| where I may not get an answer for hours.
|
| Basically like having a toddler around. Sorry for the negative
| take here but how it's written it feels like you don't
| necessarily realize that some people do need deep work, and
| prioritize your quick satisfaction to other's focus. Or I might
| be projecting, but I simply can't stand incessantly being asked
| questions, I view it as a type of interruption.
|
| > running ideas by others. This doesn't happen on chat for me,
| and VC is too scheduled.
|
| Yes, because who needs order in their time when somebody just
| wants to ask the group from their opinion, without even bothering
| to write it down. Also, whoever is sick that day and missing from
| the office, that's on them, whatever discussion happened, no
| evidence of it, so sucks to be them I guess.
|
| > I don't feel connected to me team at all working from home
|
| I...am sorry.
| spike021 wrote:
| >Basically like having a toddler around.
|
| Unnecessarily condescending response to the OP, to be honest.
| ath3nd wrote:
| Fair take.
|
| I am not trying to be condescending here, but it's hard to
| view this behavior as anything but overly disruptive.
|
| https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/
|
| Instead of "just a quick question", the OP could prepare a
| list of their questions, and ask them all at the allocated
| time. A scheduled deep dive into the questions the OP has
| might even be more productive than multiple unscheduled
| disruptions of others' time.
|
| And in an open office, even if you ask only a single person
| something, others might hear it too, despite the question not
| being intended to them.
|
| We are talking about multiple people's brain cycles being
| dragged out their focus space, we are talking multiple
| conversations happening next to you, we are talking about
| click clack of people's keyboards next to you, and people
| moving going to take a coffee in your peripheral vision. It's
| a nightmare.
|
| https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-
| heres...
|
| https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices
| cauch wrote:
| So what you are asking is that OP destroy their own "deep
| work" a lot just that you don't get a mild distraction in
| yours.
|
| > And in an open office, even if you ask only a single
| person something, others might hear it too, despite the
| question not being intended to them.
|
| I guess I'm special, because when I'm in a "deep work", I
| just don't hear people around me. I know it's not the case
| of everyone, some of my colleagues just put noise-
| suppression headphones, which is yet another easy way to
| solve your problem without forcing others to cater to your
| needs.
|
| Of course, open space can be bad, and there are numerous
| examples of crazy open space situations. But what OP was
| describing is clearly not to the extend of what you are
| talking then.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > So what you are asking is that OP destroy their own
| "deep work" a lot just that you don't get a mild
| distraction in yours.
|
| Yes! I believe the OP should write down all their
| questions in a structured format, and then schedule a
| meetings with 1 person helping them onboard, where they
| can discuss the questions at length and go on any
| tangent, rather than interrupt colleagues ad hoc. That's
| a normal, grown up thing to do, and it will also help
| them crystallize and distill what knowledge is missing.
|
| > I know it's not the case of everyone, some of my
| colleagues just put noise-suppression headphones, which
| is yet another easy way to solve your problem without
| forcing others to cater to your needs
|
| I do put noise suppression headphones, but they can't
| stop the people moving in front of me nor the taps on my
| shoulder.
|
| > without forcing others to cater to your needs
|
| Not wanting to be interrupted is not forcing others to
| take care of your needs.If you are unsure what I mean,
| let me call you in the middle of the night because I want
| to have a conversation with somebody and discuss
| economics. You not wanting to pick up is completely
| normal, right, or are you forcing ME to cater to your
| needs of being left the heck at peace? How dare you
| forcing me to have normal boundaries and call you at
| reasonable times!
|
| No, it's the people who interrupt others and forcing to
| drop everything else so they answer "just one tiny
| question" and expecting it to be done on the spot. That's
| forcing people to take cater to their needs! Hence me
| liking the OP's behavior to that of a toddler.
| cauch wrote:
| > I believe the OP should write down all their questions
| in a structured format, and then schedule a meetings with
| 1 person helping them onboard, ...
|
| Let me guess: that 1 person will of course not be you,
| right? Because if it is you, I bet you will complain even
| more.
|
| Also, it's ridiculous to pretend that all questions
| require deep dive at length. Some do, and, yes, I agree
| we should do that for those. But what about the majority
| of the questions? If these questions still exist, then
| you will still be interrupted, so it will not solve the
| situation.
|
| Also, it is quite telling that you did not also consider
| another solution: if they need to ask you a question, you
| could have avoided that by properly sharing the
| information before hand. But of course, it's always
| someone else's fault. (just to be clear: it is sometimes
| someone else's fault, but your way of reacting of just
| thinking that everyone else should adapt is just giving
| me the impression that you don't care about solving the
| problem in a fair way)
|
| But it does not answer my question: what you ask them to
| do is very inconvenient and inefficient, as the large
| majority of questions do not correspond to big dangerous
| lack of knowledge that needs 3 hours lecture course to be
| solved. So we still have the problem: why should the
| company pay for one person being less efficient because
| of needing to do all this useless process, instead of
| paying for you being less efficient?
|
| > I do put noise suppression headphones, but they can't
| stop the people moving in front of me ...
|
| As I've said, I don't understand how people can be in
| "deep flow" and be so easily distracted by people moving
| around. People are different, so I can understand it can
| be a problem for you. But my problem with this reaction
| is that everything is centered around what is best for
| you, without any considerations of how it affects others.
| I reacted because you first mentioned that GP was
| behaving like a toddler, but in your reaction and the
| description of the problem, you seems to focus on you,
| you, you, which does not look very grown-up either, don't
| you think?
|
| > ... nor the taps on my shoulder
|
| If they tap on your shoulder, you should simply answer,
| like a grown-up does.
|
| > Not wanting to be interrupted is not forcing others to
| take care of your needs.If you are unsure what I mean,
| let me call you in the middle of the night ...
|
| But you are not complaining about being interrupted in
| the middle of the night to talk about things that is not
| related to you, you are complaining about doing your job:
| working with colleagues and sharing information so that
| they can progress.
|
| What I'm saying is simple: 1) you can be a toddler and
| interrupt someone constantly for no good reason. This is
| not good and unprofessional 2) you can be a toddler and
| cry when someone interrupt you for a good reason. This is
| not good and unprofessional 3) the good situation is in
| the middle: you WILL have some level of interruption, it
| is just unreasonable to expect otherwise and it is
| childish to ask people to jump through hoops to care to
| your need to never be interrupted.
|
| > How dare you forcing me to have normal boundaries and
| call you at reasonable times!
|
| You don't have normal boundaries. Grown-ups at work know
| that they will interact with other people. You inventing
| that people should not interact with you, or interact
| only in your own terms even when it is inconvenient for
| them.
|
| > Hence me liking the OP's behavior to that of a toddler.
|
| OP's behavior did not even mention if they interrupt
| people that have inform them they don't want to be
| interrupted. As far as we know, OP's behavior is 100%
| compatible with what you want.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > Let me guess: that 1 person will of course not be you,
| right? Because if it is you, I bet you will complain even
| more.
|
| I don't mind it being me, as a matter of fact, it's often
| me, as I am in a more senior position and have a lot of
| historic context. However, a lot of time has been spent
| on documenting most things, so often I am just going over
| the docs with the new onboarder, which is okay, as long
| as it's done in a structural manner.
|
| > You don't have normal boundaries. Grown-ups at work
| know that they will interact with other people. You
| inventing that people should not interact with you, or
| interact only in your own terms even when it is
| inconvenient for them.
|
| I don't mind interacting at all, nor do I mind
| onboarding. I do mind, however, being interrupted all the
| time, on information, that could easily have been
| condensed in an onboarding package if the company gave
| people the space, time and initiative to create such a
| package.
|
| What I am pointing out is that the OP experienced bad
| onboarding and thought the solution to that is being in-
| person in the office. I would argue what they simply had
| was a badly planned onboarding, with randomly shared
| responsibility across the team, and an ad-hoc learning
| plan. If the OP's company uses that lesson and makes a
| better onboarding process, that'd be great and they might
| even reconsider the need to be there in person.
|
| > you are complaining about doing your job: working with
| colleagues and sharing information so that they can
| progress.
|
| I would love share the information, but I want to do it
| in a structured manner, and not in chunks and without
| disruptions.
|
| That's why schools and unis have classes, and classes
| have predictable and scheduled time frames. It's not just
| a building with teachers, and random children entering ad
| hoc and asking whatever question came to their head, then
| leaving, and coming back 5 min later.
|
| And what's wrong with wanting lots of this information to
| be self-service? That's the whole idea of knowledge
| bases, of onboarding docs, of developer handbooks. What
| does it have to with people being in person or not? I'd
| argue if the OP's company spent the effort in actually
| putting all that knowledge in writing, they will have an
| easier and less disruptive onboarding to the team, with
| reduced bus factor, and clearly documented steps.
| cauch wrote:
| > I don't mind it being me, as a matter of fact, it's
| often me, as I am in a more senior position and have a
| lot of historic context. However, a lot of time has been
| spent on documenting most things, so often I am just
| going over the docs with the new onboarder, which is
| okay, as long as it's done in a structural manner.
|
| So, according to you, no one would ever need to ask you a
| question. So, obviously, GP will never ask you a question
| (they will ask other people if they want to).
|
| So why are you calling them "toddler"?
|
| > I do mind, however, being interrupted all the time, on
| information, that could easily have been condensed in an
| onboarding package if the company gave people the space,
| time and initiative to create such a package.
|
| This is not at all what OP was presenting. You realize
| that?
|
| > What I am pointing out is that the OP experienced bad
| onboarding and thought the solution to that is being in-
| person in the office.
|
| That is not true. Plenty of people are having a very good
| onboarding and still like to fine-tune their
| understanding of the situation, which is arguably a very
| good way to reach good software.
|
| > would love share the information, but I want to do it
| in a structured manner, and not in chunks and without
| disruptions.
|
| But that is exactly the point of my initial comment about
| workflow. When your colleague Johnny needs the quick and
| simple information X to allow him to finish his code (for
| example "I've read what ath3nd has written in the doc,
| but it is ambiguous because sometimes it is, obviously
| ath3nd is not a god who can read mind and think of all
| the interpretation of their comment, especially when
| ath3nd is also not expected to not introduce a bug in the
| code from time to time"), you are asking him to break his
| flow, write some kind of ticket, wait for it to be
| triaged and come to you and wait for you to answer.
|
| Your initial point is that you need to not be interrupted
| when you are in your flow, and you are now arguing that
| we should use a very flow interrupting process for the
| other participants.
|
| > That's why schools and unis have classes ...
|
| Are you seriously pretending that GP that just said
| "asking quick questions and getting an instant answer" is
| in fact in favor of not having any structure at all?
|
| In fact, guess what, in a lot of classes, students are
| allowed to ask questions during some part of the lecture,
| even during exercises. Yes, incredible, right: some
| students are concentrating on solving the exercises while
| others _talk_! They _talk_! In the same room! Instead of
| writing a written letter to the teacher and wait for the
| post return so they can proceed with the exercise they
| have a question about.
|
| > And what's wrong with wanting lots of this information
| to be self-service?
|
| No one here is arguing against that. Simply, you can have
| as much self-service you want, it will never make a quick
| and simple question not the most efficient way to go.
|
| It is just incredible that some people are so self-
| centered that they cannot understand that asking simple
| and quick questions is just, SOMETIMES, a super
| pragmatical and efficient way of progressing.
| auggierose wrote:
| You sound extremely self-centered yourself. Its fine if
| you thrive in a collaborative open office environment,
| and noise-cancelling headphones are all you need. But
| that's not true for everybody else.
|
| Your argument that you need to maintain your flow by
| actively interrupting other people is incredibly selfish
| and frankly just ridiculous. Also, flow is overrated. If
| you are in flow-mode, you are probably not doing the hard
| parts of your job. Not having to context-switch is
| different from flow, but more important, I would say, but
| you are forcing that on your fellow developers. If they
| don't mind, that's fine! If they do, you should respect
| that.
| cauch wrote:
| I think you did not got my point. My point is not that it
| is self-centered to "break the flow" (or whatever you
| call the reason that makes asking a question disruptive).
|
| My point is that we had a situation where at least one
| person is going to adapt. The person self-centered is the
| one saying "the good solution is to have the other person
| adapt".
|
| I'm NOT saying that the good solution is to have the
| other person adapt, I'm saying "why are you saying that
| having the other person adapt is the best solution?
| That's self-centered".
|
| You answer me by saying "you are asking me to adapt to
| you, so, you are self-centered".
|
| But I don't ask that. I don't force anyone. I'm just
| saying "why are you upset that this guy is forcing you to
| adapt to him but think that you forcing him to adapt to
| you is not self-centered".
|
| I see the situation as very very symmetrical:
|
| Some people needs A to be efficient, some people needs
| non-A to be efficient.
|
| One aspect of the problem is that some people say "I like
| A, so let me just do A, and I let you non-A". But in
| reality, they don't let them do non-A. If you are a team
| of 2, and that you like not receiving questions but that
| your coworker like to ask question, there is no situation
| where we satisfy both.
|
| The only solution is to act like adult and accept that I
| will do less A than I would have liked, but my coworker
| will do less non-A that they would have liked.
|
| But here, some are saying "no! I want to do all A and
| it's to my coworker to adapt fully".
| auggierose wrote:
| I'd say two people like that shouldn't be on the same
| team, at least not on their own. If it is possible to
| find some sort of compromise, that's great, but it might
| not be. You are going to make each other extremely
| unhappy, and why would anyone want to put up with that?
| cevn wrote:
| Everybody thinks their question is simple and quick, then
| it takes 30 minutes of time at minimum. I dunno why you
| are getting so much push back, must be a bunch of
| managers. Developers need to be left alone.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The push back is because it's extreme and one-sided. If
| you have some information that unblocks a team member, or
| another part of the business, say to make a sale, yes you
| should be interrupted. Your salary comes from somewhere,
| and your delivery is as a team, not an individual.
| cevn wrote:
| We all have access to the exact same information. Sure,
| for a first time on boarder, I'll point them the right
| way.
|
| But 90% of the time someone taps on my shoulder, they
| want me to think for them. You can do that by yourself.
| Just send an email.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > We all have access to the exact same information.
|
| We might have the same access, but rather than dig
| through 20 medical textbooks, I'll go ask a doctor.
| Access is a really poor way of thinking about things.
|
| > But 90% of the time someone taps on my shoulder, they
| want me to think for them. You can do that by yourself.
| Just send an email.
|
| Why send an email when they're thinking for themselves?
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| > Why send an email when they're thinking for themselves?
|
| Because, the act of writing down a question --- with the
| necessary details to state the question precisely --- is
| often enough to find the answer yourself. Unless it is
| simple matter of a missing fact. But that is rarely the
| case in my line of work.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think assuming everyone's situation is the same as
| yours, or your imagined stereotype of what people must be
| like if they don't agree with you, constitutes a lot of
| the content that's being pushed back on.
|
| Some businesses have huge depths of technical content to
| understand that can't all the memorised in a training
| session. Nothing difficult can. Even knowing who to talk
| to about an issue is going to be found out via a
| question.
| cevn wrote:
| If I am a doctor in this situation, then you can create a
| JIRA ticket and I will see it .. eventually. Do you have
| instant access to all of your doctors?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| But why would you see it if we have access to the same
| information? That's the point you made that I'm
| disagreeing with. Are you now saying that yes, even
| though I and my doctor might have access to the same
| information, that doesn't mean I should never ask my
| doctor things?
| cevn wrote:
| If we have the same access, we are both developers? You
| can ask things, just.. asynchronously. If it takes a long
| time for me to respond, you probably could have found the
| information yourself in that time.
| awelxtr wrote:
| You don't go to ask a doctor.
|
| You get an appointment. Here noone is against
| appointments, here people discuss the notion of going to
| ask a doctor in the middle of a surgery a "quick
| question".
| danaris wrote:
| Because an email allows me to field it _when I am not
| working on high-focus tasks_.
|
| It also
|
| 1) forces (or at least encourages) laying the whole thing
| out in a coherent order
|
| 2) leaves a record of both the question and the answer,
| so that the asker can refer back to it if they forget
|
| 3) leaves a record so that if the asker is asking obvious
| questions, or repeatedly asking the same questions, or
| failing to formulate their questions in a sane and
| coherent manner, there is documentation to take to their
| supervisor, not only to prove it, but to show _exactly
| the shape of the problem_ , and have a possibility of
| getting them the kind of help they need
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| Because, you bring up sales, I am assuming that is your
| area of expertise. If a big sale can be unblocked by
| asking some specific employee an important question now,
| do it. If that happens five times a day, those sales are
| neither big nor are these very specific questions.
| Developers are most productive when in deep working mode.
| A simple question like "What time is it?" can be answered
| in 5 s, but it may cost a developer 30 min when in deep
| working mode. Because of the lost focus. On the other
| hand, many questions (not onboarding questions) could be
| answered by the colleagues themselves, if they would
| spend a bit more time on them. Thereby, they would learn
| more than just by getting the answer.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Because, you bring up sales, I am assuming that is your
| area of expertise
|
| I'm not in sales at all. Having an overview of the
| different bits of the business isn't a sales attribute.
| It's just an example of "what your job is" - which might
| range from weeks of uninterrupted detailed technical work
| at Microsoft Research, to presenting to clients, to
| running teams, to making technical decisions and getting
| agreement, to writing code.
|
| Thinking every engineer's job is "writing code" and
| anyone who thinks wider is wrong is what the pushback in
| this thread is all about.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| > I'm not in sales at all.
|
| My fault.
|
| > Thinking every engineer's job is "writing code" and
| anyone who thinks wider is wrong is what the pushback in
| this thread is all about.
|
| Writing code is not the only activity of an engineer that
| requires focus and concentration. Most of my activities
| require that.
| alemanek wrote:
| It really isn't though. OP has been pretty clear.
|
| Need help? Send an email or make an appointment and he
| will respond with help.
|
| How is it your assumption that the team member asking the
| question can't possibly be delayed 30-45min for them to
| be available. Seriously? Are they in an active shooter
| situation and need to phone a friend or something. Lives
| on the line?
| jwells89 wrote:
| Propensity for distraction varies a lot between people.
|
| For me it varies on a day to day basis. Some days I could
| focus through a hurricane while others people buzzing
| around me is enough to make it difficult to think at all,
| let alone deeply. It averages out to normal productivity
| but I'd rather have fewer low productivity days, if I had
| the choice.
| scbrg wrote:
| > some of my colleagues just put noise-suppression
| headphones
|
| Great. Now the rest of us have to put up with even more
| noise.
|
| People wearing headphones make a lot more noise
| themselves. Presumably because they don't hear the noise
| they make. Suddenly there's heavy breathing, sighs,
| grunts, moans, inaudible and sometimes disturbingly
| audible mumbling, humming &c.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| You might have Misophonia. It's not normal to be
| extremely irritated by sounds other people make.
|
| The "normal" state is to be able to tune those out.
| scbrg wrote:
| I'm not when it's normal noises, made by non headphone
| wearing people.
|
| Normally people are conscious about the sounds they make
| and restrict them a bit. If you're coughing in a group,
| you try to do it softly, or you leave the room. Things
| like that. When people wear head phones this kind of
| subconscious self control seems to be a lot less
| effective.
|
| I'm certainly not the only one to have made this
| observation.
| wharvle wrote:
| I sometimes start _audibly breathing_ with headphones on.
| Something I never do without them. So I won't wear them
| around others when I can avoid it.
|
| That's aside from tapping I might not realize is making
| noise with headphones on, or a particular motion in my
| chair that's making it squeak and I don't know it because
| headphones, et c.
| alok99 wrote:
| Loud breathing is one of my biggest concerns when wearing
| noise-cancelling headphones around others. Partly because
| I dislike hearing it from others and don't want to
| subject them to that, and partly because I don't want to
| sound like a smooth-brain mouth breather.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| A scheduled list of questions at a preset time is often
| pretty bad too. Scheduling a 30 min VC for 1 simple little
| question sucks and conversely sometimes you have no idea
| how big of a can of worms you're about to open or who even
| has an opinion on it. Chat messages are best IMO but the
| team needs to make an effort to respond when they aren't in
| the zone.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > could prepare a list of their questions,
|
| Unless 90% of the questions you spend time coming up with
| become entirely irrelevant after you receive the answer to
| the first one
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| Calling adults "toddlers" is condescending, don't pretend
| you didn't know that.
| matsemann wrote:
| I think I would be fine not having you in the office, given
| your condescending response..
|
| > _Basically like having a toddler around._
|
| I changed jobs during lockdown. When I've joined other
| companies earlier, everyone knew to step in to help the new
| guy. So people would constantly ask me how I was doing, see if
| I were struggling and ask to help me, or I could just poke
| someone in the room.
|
| But getting onboarded remotely during lockdown (in a non-
| remote-first company), I didn't know who to ask. No one could
| see me being stuck. I couldn't just ask out in the open room.
| Writing a message in a chat channel meant it could take ages
| before I got any help to get going.
|
| Yay to me for at least not "disturbing" people. But the
| tradeoff here is that the whole team suffers as a team, just so
| people can have personal productivity. Which I think lessens
| speed in the long run. We're not code-monkeys picking Jira-
| tasks and dishing out features. We're working on a project
| together.
| laserlight wrote:
| When I read your account of your onboarding at two different
| companies, I can only see a company with a good culture and
| another company with a poor culture. If you had onboarded the
| first company remotely, I bet you would have got check-in
| messages. Similarly, if you had onboarded the second company
| on-site, nobody would have cared about how you were doing.
| matsemann wrote:
| Yes, but that's the company culture the one I'm replying to
| is advocating for. A culture where you never should dare
| asking anyone for help, as you're inconveniencing them.
| Just sit silent with your problems and schedule a meeting
| the next day, and they might find it in their heart to help
| you. Or also get annoyed by "all the meetings destroying
| their focus time"..
| ath3nd wrote:
| I advocate for another culture, as I've seen everybody
| beihg happy with it.
|
| I advocate for a culture where onboardings are mostly
| self service and most documentation is up to date,
| frequently available, and easy to access. A culture where
| people are not afraid to ask questions, but they rarely
| have to, because most of the stuff is at the docs, and
| they never wonder who to ask, because they've been told
| who their onboarding "buddy" is. The person being
| onboarded is also aware that it's probably a good idea to
| batch their questions into a list, so they can discuss
| them with their buddy during their scheduled meetings,
| but is also not afraid to ad-hoc ask questions, because
| no documentation is perfect. If these ad-hoc questions
| are too much and too often, it might be that something in
| the self service is missing, and that is remedied
| accordingly.
|
| In the culture I advocate, everybody's satisfied, learned
| well, and mindful of each other's time and flow, and it
| has nothing to do with being in the office or not. In
| fact, I have anecdotally noticed that in-person companies
| are more likely to use existing people's time and
| attention as crutches for compensating for a the lackings
| of a comprehensive on-boarding plan, which is what I
| believe the OP experienced and wrongfully thought to be
| the solution.
| justinclift wrote:
| Sounds like the remote company wasn't that good at it, or at
| least the team you were in.
|
| At the very least they should have assigned someone to be
| your mentor for coming up to speed.
|
| That way you have someone you can ask (and you're aware you
| should) and you're not just forgotten about and left to you
| own devices, which is rarely successful.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| This shit about being connected is killing me, people goes to
| work as part of their social life and are ruining everyone else
| existence, if people doesn't have connections therapist is
| where they should go not coworkers
| ath3nd wrote:
| To be fair, I was a bit overly harsh with the OP, and it's
| purely due to reactionary reasons, as I've been far too often
| on the receiving end of a barrage of questions from multiple
| sides, while trying to meet deadlines. And I don't blame the
| newcomers, they are simply finding their way in a bad
| situation, I blame the company.
|
| The funny part here is that the companies expect you to help
| onboard new employees AND do your other work at the same
| time, while at the same refusing to give you the time to
| build on a proper onboarding, with documentation to read,
| what software to install, etc.
|
| In my current company we assign a "buddy" to the new
| onboarders, we have a handbook + a (supported and tested)
| onboarding installation toolkit, and pretty good
| documentation. The buddy does the handholding via scheduled
| and ad-hoc sessions, the onboarding material does the rest.
| During the pandemic we got to test this approach out on
| people who haven't even visited the office, and we improved
| it iteratively on every new onboardee. It's surprising how
| just improving such a small thing makes onboarding so much
| more pleasant for everybody, and how this, when done well,
| works both for office AND remote new employees.
| harwoodjp wrote:
| I agree that this is the case, though the causes are
| pathological to the system, not the individual. You have to
| spend all your time at work, so you depend on it for social
| stimulus.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > you don't necessarily realize that some people do need deep
| work, and prioritize your quick satisfaction to other's focus
|
| Surely there must be ways to balance these things?
|
| When you want to ask someone a question it shouldn't be too
| hard to infer whether it's a good time to do that now or you
| should wait (if it is, well it's exactly a very hard skill to
| learn if you put in some effort)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You need it to be a good time for all 6 people
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| No, you don't. You need to communicate it effectively to 6
| people and be open enough so they aren't waiting for the 15
| minutes you claim to have free. IN general, if folks have a
| question and can easily see that you don't want to be
| interrupted _right then_ , they'll wait a bit.
| fzzzy wrote:
| Yes. It is easy to balance these things. Ask the question in
| an asynchronous medium.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I feel like that's exactly what email or pinging someone in a
| group chat is for, or at least that's how I prefer it.
|
| If I'm deeply focused on something else, I'll just ignore the
| notification, if I'm available I'll respond.
|
| Bonus points for just posting it to a team group chat or CC-
| ing everyone involved so someone else might be able to handle
| it.
| spike021 wrote:
| That's no different from being in an office though.
|
| If someone taps me on the shoulder and says they need a few
| minutes of my time looking over problematic code or
| whatever, I can say "sure just give me about 15 minutes to
| finish off this X/Y/Z"
|
| When someone is relegated to doing this over
| Slack/Teams/whatever, the other person might have their
| notifications muted and rarely check for new ones. So it
| could end up being several hours of waiting.
|
| Just because someone checks in with you IRL and asks if you
| have time to help with a question doesn't mean you need to
| be interrupted from "flow".
| dotnet00 wrote:
| A notification is a quick glance in the corner of the
| screen, a tap on the shoulder is turning around to look
| at and focus on the person talking to you.
|
| The latter is a full context switch to me. It will often
| leave me having to try to remind myself what I was just
| thinking and having to rebuild that thought.
| damontal wrote:
| I used to work in an open office and one guy had a light
| mounted to his cube. When it was red it meant do not disturb.
| Green meant he was available for whatever.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > it feels like you don't necessarily realize that some people
| do need deep work, and prioritize your quick satisfaction to
| other's focus.
|
| This is very one-sided. If you can unblock someone now so they
| don't spend 3 hours searching through the local intranet for
| some information, then that makes your team faster. There's a
| balance to be had, of course, but your team's overall delivery
| is what's important.
|
| > I view it as a type of interruption.
|
| It's not your view. Of course it's an interruption. That
| doesn't make it bad.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| Of course there is a balance needed. But spending once 3
| hours to search something might increase familiarity with the
| resources the intranet provides. So the next question could
| be answered way faster. Or it could be the occasion to
| improve the local intranet with some missing cross reference
| or some comment.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Or it might be 100% wasted time that could be bypassed with
| a 5 minute conversation across the room. =)
| otteromkram wrote:
| Or, via chat or a phone call. No physical presence
| required :-D
| nicoburns wrote:
| > But spending once 3 hours to search something might
| increase familiarity with the resources the intranet
| provides.
|
| Assuming your company even has an intranet.
| beeboobaa wrote:
| > If you can unblock someone now so they don't spend 3 hours
|
| Past your training period you are responsible for your own
| productivity. Don't make it the problem of your peers.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| You are clearly not a team player.
|
| The goal is to make the team succeed, not to be individual
| rockstars.
| beeboobaa wrote:
| Sure, and if you can't keep up then you should reflect on
| that. Meetings and discussions are great. Constantly
| nagging your coworkers because you can't figure out how
| to do your job on your own is not.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Constantly nagging your coworkers because you can't
| figure out how to do your job on your own is not.
|
| This is the problem: you've invented this scenario. There
| is a gaping middle ground between what people are
| describing and your stereotype of what they "must really
| mean"?
| danaris wrote:
| I think the problem is that too many of us have
| _experienced_ this scenario, _and_ had it described much
| in the way that the OP of the thread did.
|
| Too many people are too un-self-aware to recognize that
| their "just a 5-minute question" is being asked because
| _they have not internalized the knowledge_ , rather than
| because it's genuinely something that they haven't had an
| opportunity to learn--too un-self-aware to recognize that
| this situation is unnecessarily stressful and it's their
| fault.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Too many people are too un-self-aware to recognize that
| their "just a 5-minute question" is being asked because
| they have not internalized the knowledge, rather than
| because it's genuinely something that they haven't had an
| opportunity to learn--too un-self-aware to recognize that
| this situation is unnecessarily stressful and it's their
| fault.
|
| This is just assumptions though. Too many? Compared to
| what? Narrators are just as unreliable as anyone; some
| will be unreasonably opposed to any questions. Complaints
| aren't all 100% trustworthy. And complainants can also be
| un-self aware in that when they were more junior, or new,
| then they also asked questions. They just maybe had
| people answer them who were more happy to invest in them.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Yeah people do this simply don't recognize that they are
| annoying other people. From long time ago I have figured
| that there are two kinds of people in this world. One is
| more aware to him/herself and one if more aware to the
| outward world. Group 1 are usually tagging other people
| for their benefits (or, for the team's benefit as they so
| see it) while Group 2 do not do that very often.
|
| Of course this has nothing to say with selfishness or
| else. It's simply that each Group project their own ideas
| to the outward world -- so people who like to outreach
| think other people like that too, while people who
| doesn't think the inverse. But taking a step back as a
| third party, we would realize that Group 2 is usually
| more harmed than benefited.
| ath3nd wrote:
| I think if we constantly interrupt each other, we should
| very critically ask ourselves if that's the proper way
| forward. Often people physically being there is used as a
| "crutch" or a "band aid" to bad onboarding practices and
| big knowledge gaps. I am tired of people seeing their team
| drowning, distracted, noise, responding to the same
| question 31040041 times and then simply saying: "well, I
| need to be there in person to help Josh, he just started".
| While that's a good team spirit, you gotta look beyond
| that. There are things you can do to make it easy for
| yourselves and the new starters.
|
| Of course, people are responsible for their own
| productivity, but there is also such a thing as a team. And
| the team itself will benefit if people are less disruptive
| of each other.
|
| My point is that teams should retrospect aggressively on
| where they spend their time, and if they find that lots of
| their time is spent on answering questions to onboarders or
| big knowledge gaps between one another, they should do
| something about it.
|
| I won't waste space here outlining what can be done, but
| there ARE things that can be done. Do those things, and
| then the argument that you:
|
| A) "must" be in the office to do good collaborative work
|
| B) and you "have" to ask 5 min questions all the time
|
| loses any validity and becomes just corporate laziness and
| bad management.
| mariusor wrote:
| > If you can unblock someone now so they don't spend 3 hours
| searching through the local intranet for some information,
| then that makes your team faster.
|
| I'll be blunt here. I have very little interest in how the
| team I'm part of performs in general. Trying to make one
| person feel guilty that someone else can't do independent
| study is very toxic in my opinion, and I usually remove
| myself from under management that approaches leadership like
| that.
|
| Asking questions should always be done, in my opinion,
| _after_ you tried to unblock yourself by RTFM-ing. If people
| feed you information every time you're stuck, it seldom
| sticks to your mind as well as going through the motions
| yourself.
| woooooo wrote:
| I'm as frustrated as anyone with "let me Google that for
| you" style interruptions but you don't ship anything alone.
| You need a team.
| justinclift wrote:
| > I have very little interest in how the team I'm part of
| performs in general
|
| In a lot of situations that would be considered fairly
| toxic itself. :(
| mariusor wrote:
| How so? The camaraderie that companies try to enforce on
| their low lever employees with this kind of manipulation
| is nothing but a ruse.
|
| Why do you think that a whole team of people should be
| responsible for the inability of some? I have empathy for
| individual people that start their careers and struggle,
| but I also believe that if you apply for a job, you
| should be qualified to do it independently.
| em-bee wrote:
| camaraderie in a team is a job requirement for me.
| without it i'll be out of there in no time. i simply do
| not want to work with people who can't be bothered to be
| nice and helpful to each other.
|
| i do not want to be just a cog in a machine that grinds
| out work without any consideration for the project as a
| whole.
|
| it is also needed to allow new team members to get
| onboarded faster.
|
| as a hiring manager i find your attitude unwelcome.
| mariusor wrote:
| That's perfectly fine. I think the world is large enough
| so we can coexist in peace.
|
| Also I don't dismiss camaraderie that appears
| spontaneously between coworkers, I was complaining about
| the company enforced fake camaraderie that gets pushed
| down everyone's throats with trite team building
| exercises, company parties, team goals and other methods
| of hammering people into conformity.
|
| > it is also needed to allow new team members to get
| onboarded faster.
|
| Of course, it's fine to have team members absorb domain
| knowledge through interactions with their peers, but if
| that's the only way to on-board them, I most definitely
| don't want to work for you, but again, that's fine, I'll
| just look elsewhere.
| em-bee wrote:
| i agree with the forced stuff. but i expect a level of
| interaction to be naturally there so that enforced
| camaraderie is not even needed.
|
| _it 's fine to have team members absorb domain knowledge
| through interactions with their peers, but if that's the
| only way to on-board them, I most definitely don't want
| to work for you_
|
| ok, you lost me here. what other way is there? it's not
| possible to assess all the knowledge a new hire has. if i
| have to hire a trainer to get them up to speed it will
| just cost more money and they will not learn the company
| specific domain knowledge.
|
| in my experience specifically onboarding can only be done
| by others on the same team. it's a teams responsibility.
|
| for more thoughts on this topic, see the discussion here:
| https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1
| 190...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I was complaining about the company enforced fake
| camaraderie that gets pushed down everyone's throats with
| trite team building exercises, company parties, team
| goals and other methods of hammering people into
| conformity.
|
| This is nothing to do with what you said before, about
| not wanting team performance to be important. Unless
| you're there to do a very specific job, a lot of
| performance is actually about team performance. If
| nothing else, the bus factor on people who want to do
| things solo makes them an automatic liability.
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| > I'll be blunt here. I have very little interest in how
| the team I'm part of performs in general.
|
| Don't be surprised when others show the same level of
| empathy towards you, then. It's not about making you feel
| guilty, it's about making you do you effing job. Unless
| you're in a very junior position, your job is not to pump
| out code day in and day out.
| mariusor wrote:
| 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.
| em-bee wrote:
| 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.
| mariusor wrote:
| Are you just telling me that you don't want to do your
| job properly as a hiring manager, which in my opinion
| would be to get the best people for the job, and that you
| prefer to pass the buck to your team to train them?
|
| I mean, sure, that's fine if this is stipulated from the
| start, but if you expect someone to solve leet code, do
| programming homework, and then when they get hired they
| have to also navigate your extra requirements and teach
| people the basics of their job (because probably you
| couldn't be bothered to pay enough) then in my opinion
| you're taking advantage of these people pure and simple.
|
| And to top it off, I know managers sometimes fools
| themselves that the team is invested in the "project
| moving forward", but that's rarely the case. As an
| individual I probably don't give a damn about the
| project, unless we're solving one the big issues of the
| world. The bullshit CRUD application you work on, or the
| latest cryptocurrency is just a means to get a paycheck
| for most of the people, and if you expect anyone to fake
| enthusiasm for it you're just deluded.
| em-bee wrote:
| the best people for the job are not necessarily those
| that need no training. there are a lot of things to
| consider. part of that is that while new hires may need
| training, they also bring experience and knowledge to the
| team that others can benefit from. training doesn't only
| go one way.
|
| you seem to prefer working on your own, neither willing
| to teach nor learn from others. that's fine if you can
| find a job as a lone developer, but i don't consider this
| a suitable attitude for working on a team.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Are you just telling me that you don't want to do your
| job properly as a hiring manager, which in my opinion
| would be to get the best people for the job, and that you
| prefer to pass the buck to your team to train them?
|
| Not all jobs are simple enough to hire people into with
| generic skills. People need training. Even if it's just
| "I think that other team should prioritise this feature
| for us; who do I ask?" People need to ask questions and
| bed in over time. If you've just done simple CRUD apps in
| small orgs you may not have seen this, but that doesn't
| make it not the case.
|
| > And to top it off, I know managers sometimes fools
| themselves that the team is invested in the "project
| moving forward", but that's rarely the case. As an
| individual I probably don't give a damn about the
| project, unless we're solving one the big issues of the
| world. The bullshit CRUD application you work on, or the
| latest cryptocurrency is just a means to get a paycheck
| for most of the people, and if you expect anyone to fake
| enthusiasm for it you're just deluded.
|
| You seem to keep on inventing things no one is saying to
| respond to. If you have a load of unrelated things to get
| off your chest that's fine I suppose, but it seems you
| actually think people are saying this and you're making
| points in response to them.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I care, but I care as a result of some projects moving
| forward being part of my annual goals and affecting my
| bonus. I agree with the spirit of the post though.
| ath3nd wrote:
| 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.
| em-bee wrote:
| you are reading way to much into what i said. nothing
| what you are suggesting has anything to do with it. we
| all have work todo and we all need to contribute to
| training the new hires in some form. this has nothing to
| do with hands off management. i am not saying: here is
| the newbie, get them up to speed, but: we hired someone
| new, and we need to figure out the best approach to get
| them integrated. for me that includes that they work with
| everyone on the team for some time. including me if i am
| still involved in the development myself. i'll do my part
| of the onboarding and everyone else will do theirs.
|
| being that buddy/mentor is part of your job, and i expect
| everyone on the team including me to be able to take on
| that role as the situation demands.
|
| _moving the project forward takes quiet and
| uninterrupted work and focus time_
|
| and it takes making sure that all team knowledge is
| shared with everyone. where do you get the idea that i do
| nothing? it is my job to allocate resources properly, but
| it is also my choice how to to do that.
|
| you seem to look at onboarding as a kind of burden that i
| throw onto you on top of your other work that you'd
| rather not have to deal with. i see onboarding as part of
| the process to grow our team, exchange knowledge and
| experience and enable us to do ever better work.
|
| when i am starting a new team then i onboard/mentor
| everyone myself, until the team is grown enough and some
| of the team members have enough experience to share that
| role. eventually, the team will be large enough to divide
| up into multiple teams, but i am still the one doing the
| hiring, and i'll be involved with onboarding until the
| company grows so large that it no longer makes sense to
| do that personally. but at that point i'll still make
| hiring decisions because i feel that hiring the right
| kind of people is to important to completely delegate.
|
| the attitude that i expect from my team is that everyone
| is made welcome and we all do our best to get them
| integrated. onboarding materials can't replace that
| attitude which i see as necessary for the team to work
| well together.
| mikrl wrote:
| >I have very little interest in how the team I'm part of
| performs in general.
|
| Your job security is extremely dependent on the health of
| your company and team. If the structures which provide your
| employment contract start failing, and you do nothing about
| it, don't be surprised if you get bitten.
|
| I don't expect appeals to empathy will work based on your
| posts, and I hate "we are a big family" smoke and mirrors
| too, but let's be pragmatic here. The fact that your job
| even exists is predicated on a social and legal contract to
| provide your expertise for the benefit of a multi-person
| entity.
|
| Team health does also depend on nudging those who can't
| RTFM to do so... you can be an asshole, but you need to be
| a prosocial one as far as the company is concerned.
| bitzun wrote:
| But it's not a dichotomy between 3 hours or instantaneous.
| It's a dichotomy between instantaneous and when someone has a
| break in flow to peek at messages, which IME is more like
| 15-30 minutes (and i think it's probably fair to ask people
| to peek around that frequently if they normally wouldn't)
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Paul Graham would disagree.[1]
|
| [1] http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
| JAlexoid wrote:
| There's a very clear benefit of asking someone for help,
| when you're blocked.
|
| WFH comes with a lot of issues, when it comes to a timely
| response from people.
|
| I had many of colleagues in the WfH world, that just
| ignored me for a month...
|
| The idea that all engineering is highly focused and non-
| social just feeds the rockstar developer culture. And most
| of us aren't even close to rockstar status.
|
| There is always a balance between collaborative discussions
| and focus time. I thought that we learned it 20 years ago,
| that devs should not hide away in cubicles?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| This is a pretty common anti-pattern with how technical ICs
| view their work. No matter how technical or silo'd you are,
| your work is always going to be inherently collaborative, and
| your ability to collaborate with others is a hard bottleneck on
| everybody else's ability to extract any value at all from the
| work you do.
|
| Managing or working with ICs with this perspective is also a
| lot like having a toddler around.
| otteromkram wrote:
| I support this 100%. Programming and most tech work is pretty
| solitary. If collaboration needs to happen there's nothing
| wrong with hopping on a call.
|
| People that state what OP said should go into sales or customer
| service. Want to talk all day? There's your new job.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Sorry for the negative take here but how it's written it
| feels like you don't necessarily realize that some people do
| need deep work, and prioritize your quick satisfaction to
| other's focus.
|
| I'm always confused by people who struggle so much with being
| able to quickly answer a question and get back to what they
| were doing.
|
| Also, here you're prioritising your work over someone else's.
|
| > I simply can't stand incessantly being asked questions, I
| view it as a type of interruption
|
| Well, you are being interrupted. But you're being paid to be
| interrupted.
| alok99 wrote:
| > I'm always confused by people who struggle so much with
| being able to quickly answer a question and get back to what
| they were doing.
|
| > Also, here you're prioritising your work over someone
| else's.
|
| That's what the whole article is about. The struggle is that
| holding a context in your mind is easily broken by small
| interruptions. It's not by choice. So the question is how do
| you reconcile people on both sides working together.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| If you make me think about some technical problem other than
| the one I have halfway solved in my head, anything I didn't
| write in code is gone and I need to reinvent it almost from
| scratch.
|
| When management evaluates my performance, delivering _my_
| projects carries much more weight than helping yours (which
| they might not even be able to measure).
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack. We have to ban
| accounts that do it repeatedly, so if you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules, we'd be grateful.
|
| Also, please don't post in the flamewar style generally. It's
| not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We want
| thoughtful, curious conversation in which people are open to
| learning from one another.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38693114.
| hmaxwell wrote:
| I work at a 30 person company in a partitioned office designed
| for four people, including the CEO, a graphic designer, and a
| secretary. My role involves focused programming tasks, which are
| frequently disrupted by the office dynamics.
|
| When the CEO is away, the graphic designer and secretary
| frequently engage in loud, casual conversations, discussing
| everything from personal matters to home decor, like curtain
| colors. They also have a habit of yelling over the office
| partitions, adding to the disruption. Despite using noise-
| cancelling headphones, these distractions, including both the
| conversations and the yelling, consistently hinder my
| concentration.
|
| Interestingly, the secretary has expressed concern about the
| perceived level of activity in the office, especially when the
| CEO is present. The secretary has mentioned to both me and the
| graphic designer that there might not be enough typing noises,
| suggesting a worry that the CEO might not think everyone is
| working hard. This concern about appearances adds another layer
| to the already challenging office environment.
| serf wrote:
| >This concern about appearances adds another layer to the
| already challenging office environment.
|
| I sympathize, but I haven't yet had the pleasure of working
| with other people _without_ the existence of those kind of
| friction layers.
|
| At my age I just assume now that it's just part of the human
| condition -- but maybe it's just me.
| Loughla wrote:
| >This concern about appearances adds another layer to the
| already challenging office environment.
|
| This sentence sums up the biggest headache of my professional
| career.
|
| I have never worried about appearances, but instead focused on
| doing good work.
|
| To my detriment. I know I've missed out on key assignments and
| at least one promotion at my current employer because I don't
| sell myself or focus on perception management.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is, this exists everywhere, in every
| field of work.
| joshjje wrote:
| Thats one reason I prefer small companies. Less bureaucratic
| BS, more accountability, etc. Sure there isn't as much room
| for career growth and other downsides, but much simpler.
| eesmith wrote:
| > These two types of work were first identified, to my knowledge,
| by the programmer and essayist Paul Graham.
|
| The identification of flow state in programming was known well
| before Graham. Steve McConnell's _Rapid Development_ (1996),
| https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/506/... ,
| has
|
| "Flow time. During the analysis and design stages, software
| development is an ephemeral, conceptual activity. Like any
| conceptual activity, the quality of the work is dependent on the
| worker's ability to sustain a "flow state" -- a relaxed state of
| total immersion in a problem that facilitates understanding of it
| and the generation of solutions for it (DeMarco and Lister 1987).
| Converting brain waves to computer software is a delicate
| process, and developers work best during the hours they spend in
| this state of effortless concentration. Developers require 15
| minutes or more to enter a state of flow, which can then last
| many hours, until fatigue or interruption terminates it. If
| developers are interrupted every 11 minutes, they will likely
| never enter a flow state and will therefore be unlikely to ever
| reach their highest levels of productivity."
|
| DeMarco and Lister 1987 is "Peopleware: Productive projects and
| teams". I can't find a first edition but you can read the
| relevant part of the second edition at
| https://archive.org/details/peoplewareproduc00dema_0/page/62... .
|
| As I recall, in one of McConnell's books was a chart showing
| relative performance effectiveness of closed offices vs cubicles
| vs open floor plans, which got progressively worse. I can't now
| find that chart though.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| It really depends on individual. Some, especially juniors, needs
| to have a sentry behind their back because the moment you will
| look away, they will start doing something else, like watching
| YouTube videos
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Those ones need to be fired, not babysat. Well... If they're
| hourly anyway. If they're salary and want to take breaks but
| they get their shit done, they can do what they want.
| ImaCake wrote:
| In defense of the distracting open plan office, I find that I can
| only really be productive when I am being disrupted semi-
| regularly. My talkative boss or my noisy coworker are distracting
| and theoretically take me out of flow, but ai wouldn't even reach
| that flow if they weren't there to make me want to get there (or
| just provide enough stimulation to sate my hungry brain).
| twelve40 wrote:
| so many screens of text and not one mention of slack, which is
| the real productivity killer. Something that no amount of doors
| or offices can protect against.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Slack can be closed or at least crippled by muting every
| channel.
| esskay wrote:
| 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 work from home.
| Working in a busy office (and that includes open plan offices
| with even light chatter) is extremely counter productive.
| ath3nd wrote:
| Who would win:
|
| - literally 100s of publications showing how disruptive and
| destructive to focus it is to be working in an open office work
| and how much distractions it brings:
|
| https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-heres...
|
| https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices
|
| https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/
|
| https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/eve...
|
| https://juliety.com/effects-of-distractions-at-work
|
| https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/why-open-offi...
|
| - A bunch of extroverts who just can't wait to tell you what
| they did over the weekend. Backed, of course, by C-level dudes
| who simply can't bring themselves to believe work can be done
| if they PERSONALLY can't see you at your desk working.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| The asshats holding the bags of money, obviously
| ath3nd wrote:
| Bingo!
| Muromec wrote:
| "I can't back it up with data, I just know I'm right " of
| course
| sokoloff wrote:
| Who wins? The CFO and corp real estate people (correctly)
| saying how much more expensive (and less flexible to changing
| team size) a building with enough private offices is.
| mratsim wrote:
| So you're saying programmers' time is not expensive enough?
| sokoloff wrote:
| 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-up hiring; a Goldilocks zone;
| out of space; hiring freeze; lease/construct offices;
| loop".
|
| My office now is whatever I want to do with my house.
| That's also good for heads-down work (and obviously for
| the commute), but terrible for collaborative whiteboard
| design work.
| otteromkram wrote:
| > _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.
| eadmund wrote:
| In my experience, there is nothing like being in a room
| with a team. There is something about the physicality of
| presence, the way the communication has both lower
| latency (because it is not intermediated by electronics)
| and higher bandwidth (because in person even things like
| the way someone shifts in his shoes or his eyelid quivers
| is information).
|
| I have worked remotely for a significant portion of the
| past few decades. I work remotely. I anticipate working
| remotely for the remainder of my career. I _enjoy_
| working remotely. But working in-person has some real
| advantages. I just don't believe that they outweigh the
| disadvantages.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Similar here. I expected to hate working remotely when my
| company decided to switch. It turns out that I love it
| overall once through the adaptation period (for
| individuals and for the company).
|
| Even with that, I think there is an optimal number of
| times per year to get the team together in one physical
| space and that number is probably somewhere in the one to
| three range, but by my estimation it sure isn't zero.
| silverlake wrote:
| I agree communication is better when everyone is present.
| If a remote team was required to be available that would
| solve most of the problems. It's about the culture of WFH
| which currently assumes slow async responses.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| That's a cultural thing. All my remote colleagues are
| present and responsive. I certainly do not think it's a
| healthy assumption.
|
| WFH does not imply async.
|
| Timezones do.
| photonbeam wrote:
| Ive always been very surprised at companies that want in-
| office but then spread the workforce across a handful of
| timezones
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| My new year resolution is to never do remote work at my
| next job. I wanna be that guy known for being always
| _there_ , at his _job_ , doing what he's _paid_ to do.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You can be known for always being there, at your job,
| doing what you're paid to do, and still work remote. Just
| be there, at your job, doing what you're paid to do.
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| Fair enough. But I just can't replace real human
| interaction with remote communication. I just can't. Same
| way I could never get in a long distance relationship
| with someone. I need to be in the same room as them and
| look them in the eye when I'm explaining something to
| them. I actually like the 2-5 minutes of chit chat in the
| common kitchen every morning, talking about where my
| colleague went skiing that weekend.
|
| And I am an introvert.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > But I just can't replace real human interaction with
| remote communication. I just can't.
|
| That's entirely fair. You work best in a particular sort
| of arrangement, just as others work best in other sorts
| of arrangements. Nobody is wrong here.
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| For sure, I was just describing it the way I frame it for
| myself. I'm not gonna judge people who prefer to do
| nothing but remote
| hibernator149 wrote:
| Honest question because I'm curious. What is your
| definition of an introvert and how do you know you are
| one?
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| I don't care to be in the center of attention I guess and
| I'm very comfortable with silence.
|
| When I socialize with friends typically 1h is enough.
|
| I don't "collect" friends. I only get close to people
| when it makes sense. I am not socially inept however,
| just selective
| sokoloff wrote:
| Since GP has replied, I'll now add: I think of the divide
| as "extroverts gain energy from group social
| interactions; introverts lose energy during group social
| interactions".
|
| IMO, it's not shy vs open, as my wife is on the shy side
| but clearly extroverted, while I'm more
| visibly/apparently comfortable but I find it exhausting
| to be in groups for a long period of time.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This has seriously diminishing returns.
|
| If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to
| hear it, did it fall?
|
| If your the only one at work, did you work? Are you going
| to optimize to others view of your work habits or are you
| going to optimize to outcomes?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| 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 alarm ("it's just a
| drill!").
|
| Shame that Slack killed Screen Hero. Perhaps the
| founder's Pop.com effort will catch on.
| eropple wrote:
| I've been working remotely for most of my career and I
| intend to keep doing so, but if a "decent" virtual
| whiteboard can do that, I've yet to see it. FigJam, Miro,
| etc. all seem to be technically fine but unable to come
| up with flows that are as clearly obvious for
| collaboration as "two people standing there at a
| whiteboard". I can use all these tools quite effectively
| (I've got a LucidChart tab open right now) for solo use
| or semi-independently with close colleagues on the same
| board, but attempting to add other people creates chaos
| and a mess over the conference bridge because the
| affordances are so different from what people want out of
| rapid, high-bandwidth low-worrying-about-the-color-of-
| the-rectangle idea swapping.
|
| 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.
| pfooti wrote:
| When people are in a room you can have multiple voice
| conversations at once. When you are remote, you cannot. I
| know you can replace voice side channels with text, but
| this is a lossy proposition.
|
| Turn-taking in general is better in person due to high
| bandwidth channels for nonverbal communication.
|
| I say all of that as an autistic person who has trouble
| with all kinds of tacit communication (it may be that I
| have studied it so much in order to fit in that I really
| notice it), so yes there are downsides to being in person
| (I can pretend to make eye contact on a video), but I'm
| talking here about why the average developer or product
| person might have good reason to prefer in-person for a
| two pizza meeting.
|
| Nice whiteboarding app affordances are great, but the low
| effort of onboarding to a physical whiteboard also
| encourages broader participation.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > A decent virtual whiteboard can be better than
| physical.
|
| Interesting. I honestly assumed that virtual
| whiteboarding was universally considered worse than
| physical whiteboarding, purely because it is amongst
| everyone I've worked with.
|
| It's interesting to learn otherwise.
| cjaybo wrote:
| > Not at all
|
| The arrogance required to tell someone that their
| experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping
| my head around.
| musicale wrote:
| > The arrogance required to tell someone that their
| experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping
| my head around.
|
| It's my least favorite thing about HN, but it's one of
| the opiates of the internet. Alternate phrasing like "not
| in my experience" might be slightly better.
|
| I still think "downvote to grey" is a regression vs.
| simply letting popular comments be voted higher.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's human nature to think that our personal experience
| and worldview is representative of the general
| population, even though it almost never actually is. It's
| a thing we have to consciously be on guard about.
|
| "We tend to mistake the limits of our vision for the
| limits of the world."
|
| If you allow the misperception to take hold, it's a short
| step to concluding that anyone who isn't like you is
| weird or wrong in some way.
| danaris wrote:
| When the execs of tech companies are still able to make
| _several_ orders of magnitude more money than any of the
| programmers they employ, and their companies are able to
| make profits in the _trillions, with a t_ , no;
| programmers' time is not _priced appropriately for the
| amount of productivity we enable_.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Thankfully there is nothing at all but entrenched
| competition preventing you from leaving and becoming one
| of those execs on your own.
|
| This very website is here to help you achieve this dream.
|
| The delta in your compensation to theirs is the effective
| price that you are willing to pay to not bother with that
| hassle.
| dasil003 wrote:
| This doesn't follow, at least not without a lot more
| analysis. The biggest tech companies have tens of
| thousands of engineers make anything from low 6-figures
| to low 7-figures. That's a huge salary burden that dwarfs
| exec compensation. Systematically paying more could
| easily outstrip revenues if leadership is wrong about
| predicting the future, which would lead to either salary
| cuts or layoffs, neither of which is well received. And
| are you saying engineers deserve most of the value
| because they wrote the code? What about other functions,
| what do they deserve? These aren't easy questions to
| answer. But the reality is we don't have to because
| hiring is a market. You get paid what you negotiate. This
| is the same for execs as it is for worker bees, the only
| difference is the value of your skills according to
| whoever is holding the purse strings.
| yreg wrote:
| We have a floorplan with offices of all sizes. (Ok, the
| biggest ones are like a mini open space - mostly used by
| flexdesk people who come in only from time to time).
|
| It was more expensive, but we have zero issues with seat
| allocation. We don't force it and make teams always sit
| together. People are free to choose and switch their
| places, so often a project is spread across several offices
| and mixed with other projects.
|
| I think it's certainly superior to having an open space.
| frameset wrote:
| Good news! They can let the coders work from home and
| massively cut down the amount spent on insurance, office
| space, and furniture!
|
| Weirdly, that's not popular with the decision making
| extroverts either...
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Or the friends of the C-suites who own all that real
| estate for some reason
| dmatech wrote:
| They don't necessarily need to be big offices. It's just
| that corporations generally do seating based on seniority
| and status, not need. They have tiny cubes for worker bees
| and giant private offices for the queens.
|
| Even small offices require more costly building materials
| than large cubicles. So even a high density might still be
| somewhat expensive. Fortunately, there are opportunities
| for cheaper commercial real estate these days, so someone
| has the opportunity to try something new.
| otteromkram wrote:
| > _They have tiny cubes for worker bees [...]_
|
| Not sure if you're on the same page as this conversation.
|
| Open offices don't really have cubicles.
| danaris wrote:
| Cube farms aren't really much better for programming work
| than true open-plan offices.
|
| The article is about the split between "office with door"
| and "not that", not specifically open-plan offices, so
| talking about cube farms is absolutely valid.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| What on earth are you talking about. No one is debating
| true offices are superior but a full height cube is about
| infinitely better than open office. Cubes are sound
| insulating, they're quiet, they're more spacious than
| open office. You have storage and three to three and a
| half walls. The only physical distraction is caused by
| people walking past the opening. It's not just possible,
| but quite likely to eliminate outside movement from your
| field of view.
|
| I'll admit that plenty of cube farms are really just open
| offices in lipstick but true cube farms are far superior
| to open offices.
| biztos wrote:
| I worked for a few years in the full-height kind, and a
| few years in the lipstick kind. The full-height cube was
| awesome, I had as much privacy as I really needed but the
| barrier to interruption was just low enough that people
| weren't afraid to come ask a question.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think cube farms are substantially better than open
| office plans. I simply cannot function in an open office
| layout, but I can in a cube farm, albeit at the cost of
| productivity and the level of thinking I can accomplish.
| dmatech wrote:
| Open plans have visual and auditory distractions.
| Cubicles with decent walls at least eliminate the visual
| distractions. On the other hand, glass-walled offices
| might have decent soundproofing but have the distraction
| of people constantly walking by.
|
| There's also the question of form vs. function. A lot of
| people in leadership care a great deal about the
| workspace looking "modern" and care less about it being
| effective for the people working in it.
| em-bee wrote:
| cubes have all the disadvantages of open plan offices and
| none of the advantages of private rooms. i prefer open-
| plan offices over cubes.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Having worked in both environments, cubicles are quieter.
| They also have much less visual distraction.
| bluGill wrote:
| Last time I checked, the data on offices vs cubes came down
| as offices being the same price or even slightly cheaper.
|
| Cubes and open offices enable communication with people
| which companies value more than absolute productivity. Sure
| your best people get less done, but they often enable
| someone else to get more work down - or that is their
| claim.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That claim is dubious at best. I'm old enough to remember
| when devs had actual offices, and the amount of
| communication (even serendipitous communication) was the
| same as with any other sort of arrangement.
| oooyay wrote:
| Second this. To be more concise the groups I was in had a
| norm where you'd leave your door open if you were down to
| chat or BS. Cubes take that choice away.
| lokar wrote:
| A lot of the popularity of open plans is driven by rapid
| hiring. When you are already large (think 2015
| google/meta) and growing 50%/year it is very hard to
| manage the space for teams. Fixed offices make it nearly
| impossible.
| closeparen wrote:
| It's not unusual if it takes 20 years for a software
| developer in the Bay Area to produce output equal in value
| to a 2-bedroom condo. Skimping on office space is not some
| kind of miserly bean-counting. Software development is just
| not all that valuable compared to Tier 1 urban real estate.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Real estate in the Bay Area is high valued because of it
| being a downstream stop on the trickle down of VC money
| being blasted everywhere by idiots in to a captive
| market.
| ozim wrote:
| AI does not need real estate, I wonder how hard they will
| battle it.
|
| Well it needs server rooms but it is not office space in
| the city centers, maybe office space in city centers will
| be turned all out into server rooms.
| orangepurple wrote:
| > A bunch of extroverts who just can't wait to tell you what
| they did over the weekend and a bunch of C-level dudes who
| can't believe work can be done if they PERSONALLY can't see
| you at your desk working.
|
| The sight of people in an open office plan is merely an
| expensive therapy session for these guys
| ath3nd wrote:
| Nothing more therapeutic than the sight of your worker
| bees, stuffed together in the noisy hive, making you dough.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Lord knows many of them hate their families.
|
| Workaholism is a self soothe for those who should consider
| divorce.
| offices wrote:
| Yet people still make arguments based off the conceit that a
| profit motive means businesses act like rational hive minds.
| nitely wrote:
| idk who wins, but I'd assume extroverts need a quiet
| environment to be able to focus as much as anyone else.
| oblio wrote:
| Not if they have people facing roles. In that case their
| job IS talking to other people. Sure, they need to prepare,
| but the higher up they are, the more of that preparation is
| done by assistants.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Blaming extroverts/introverts is a red herring - it's down
| to the nature of the work.
|
| Whether they're introverts or extroverts a programmer's job
| tends to require a lot of solo focus. There's collaborative
| aspects of course but it always requires windows of deep
| work that are deeply frustrated by distraction, introvert
| or not.
|
| Many other areas of work (including much work in upper
| management) don't require that focus. The work is often
| deeply collaborative and communicative, and it's work that
| can be dropped and picked up on a dime and iterated on
| without much loss of productivity. In a way it's work that
| actively benefits from a "distracting" environment, because
| it's often full of rapid-fire blockers best resolved by
| grabbing someone nearby.
|
| The friction comes from the fact that the people who do
| either type of work don't understand the other type if
| their whole career has only involved one type.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Most programmers understand the aspects of upper
| management work you described in my experience. And most
| upper managers choose to work in separate offices.
| ath3nd wrote:
| I wonder why...
| closeparen wrote:
| The extroverts are always struggling to get conference room
| bookings. They'd be able to converse a lot more freely by
| just inviting people to their always-available offices.
| 4star3star wrote:
| I have an office with a nice, heavy door. I don't often close
| it, but just knowing that it's there and that I can close if
| I want to is a comforting thought. That said, I think if I
| did always close it, I'd be more productive by a significant
| margin....
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _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.
| voisin wrote:
| Trading floors would be one.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| 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.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| I used to be in marketing (but now developer) and not
| really (of course depends on the specific role). Sure,
| parts of marketing is meetings and discussions stuff but so
| is software development (need to discuss requirements,
| architecture, etc) - the rest of the job is deep work and
| execution on ideas (just like coding).
| Towaway69 wrote:
| The best mix imho is to have spaces where people can
| individualise their time - to focus.
|
| Small booths or mini meeting rooms or even large kitchens
| area with tables - alone amongst people.
|
| Because it's not black and white, everyone needs focus
| but also communication with others.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Mostly everything that is not creative: creativity needs
| focus. Take any job that isn't creating something, anything
| related to customer, operations, support, ... and one can do
| it in almost any conditions.
| mratsim wrote:
| MacGyver-style support needs very creative solutions
| because no budget.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Creativity doesn't require solitude. Is pair programming
| not at all creative?
| gregoriol wrote:
| I wasn't talking about solitude, but focus: you can focus
| in a quiet room with other people sitting and doing their
| stuff, but it is not possible in a room with people
| moving around, with people speaking, with intense
| external noises like construction works nearby, ...
| Underqualified wrote:
| Manufacturing, close to the floor, where you often need to
| react fast and start in the morning with no idea what you
| will be doing that day, yet will still have more work than
| hours.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Open plan is good for collaboration/communication heavy types
| of jobs. In this kind of jobs, disruptions is a way to
| propagate "just in time" information through the
| organization. You can still eliminate disruptions in such
| setting, and it superficially leads to a high "productivity"
| in terms of LOC produced, but you act on outdated/misleading
| information (or you deny that information to others), which
| often leads to working on wrong things in wrong ways.
|
| People often argue this can be fixed by just not needing to
| communicate. Like all user stories have all necessary
| information prepared. All the (functional, non-functional)
| acceptance criteria are defined, all the design documents are
| perfectly specified etc. But that's a pipe dream, which leads
| to other kinds of productivity losses.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > People often argue this can be fixed by just not needing
| to communicate.
|
| They do? I don't think I've ever heard someone make this
| argument.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Apologies, I left out the word "synchronously" in front
| of "communicate". Synchronous communication is either
| planned meetings or unplanned disruptions, which many
| people strongly dislike. A complete lack of communication
| is of course impossible, so these people strongly prefer
| asynchronous communication - very detailed spec in
| advance, emails with the implicit expectation they might
| get answered with a day-long delay etc.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Sales and marketing bullpens. Some IT roles (NOC / SOC).
| esskay wrote:
| In the case of where I work, the marketing team seem to work
| better in groups, they oftent colaborate and (I hate that
| they do this) all crowd round one laptop to discuss ideas and
| thoughts - why they dont arrange a metting and do this in the
| appropriate room is anyones guess but its gone on for years,
| and is one of the main reasons open plan for developers
| failed at the place I work.
|
| Thankfully our place is very much pro WFH but we do have an
| office with a 'quiet room' (basically a room with less desks)
| and a few pods for when you need to concentrate. The open
| plan areas are almost always 100% marketing folks though.
| nprateem wrote:
| It's never been a problem for me
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Private rooms are not cheap and it would be hard to justify for
| junior programmers. And having private space just for middle
| level folks is bad for morale and learning of junior folks.
|
| But yeah for companies which just employs senior folks this
| should be the norm.
| coev wrote:
| One private room per team works very well for programmers
| without the expense justification. The two most productive
| jobs I've ever had in an office were with that arrangement,
| not cubicles or open offices.
| joshjje wrote:
| 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.
| dragonelite wrote:
| 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.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I never saw headphones mask voice adequately without
| playing music or other sound. Or wearable all day without
| discomfort.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| same. you're basically getting earplugs at that point, or
| keeping something on in the background as a low drone
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Cancelling sound distractions with NC headsets isn't
| that bad
|
| For you. For many others (myself included), using NC
| headphones is even worse than putting up with the noise.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| how do you justify the _salary_ of a junior programmer if you
| can 't justify giving them the space they need to perform?
| isn't this just throwing money away?
|
| note that private office rooms aren't the first or only
| option, but rather work from home
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Junior dev left to his own devices will start
| reimplementing Linux kernel.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Skilled labor isn't cheap.
|
| The buildings were put there to serve the people, not the
| other way around.
|
| Even if you pay $1k per office per programmer that's still
| less than 5-10% of the cost of their salary, and would likely
| yield a performance improvement of greater than 5-10%.
|
| You say you can't afford to, I say you can't afford not to!
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > Even if you pay $1k per office per programmer
|
| You mean per year? Private office costs are much higher
| than that.
|
| If you mean per month, then you are assuming salary to be
| average of $100k-200k.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I meant per month.
|
| Yes, that is indeed the average salary for a programmer
| in my area, that's the low end.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| 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 the
| shop floor that "headphones on" meant do not disturb, just as
| much as a closed office door. Violations were not tolerated but
| it was a social norm thing not an HR write up thing. Maybe
| people were getting the latter behind the scenes though?
|
| In return you end up with an office architecture that's
| considerably easier to manage at the expense of turning the
| physical challenge of giving everyone an office into a --
| potentially intractable for some teams -- people management
| challenge.
| kstrauser wrote:
| A coworker repeatedly ignored a person's headphones and would
| interrupt them anyway. One day I put a bright post-it note on
| my headphones: "Joe, don't bother me". I was in middle of
| flow, making some huge changes, when I noticed Joe standing
| next to me, laughing. "Hahaha, someone put a post-it note on
| your headphones!" I coulda killed him.
|
| "In startup land did CFO
|
| A stately office plan decree:
|
| Through EDM, the coders flow
|
| Unless they were disturbed by Joe
|
| Until we broke his knee."
| dylan604 wrote:
| I printed out the infamous quote "Go away, or I will
| replace you with a small shell script." It was primarily
| meant for one specific employee known to have the gift of
| gab. Seeing how my job was to automate the most
| mundane/error prone tasks, it seemed to be pretty
| effective. I heard murmurings about how some thought it was
| rather rude, but I never had to speak to HR about it.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Make them fear the dark wizard's powers.
| macNchz wrote:
| I've seen this work tolerably well in an open space that's
| entirely engineers or similar roles, assuming there are
| enough conference rooms for people to peel off to for
| meetings and calls, and you can establish the culture of the
| main room having a library-esque hush.
|
| As soon as people start having multi party conversations in
| the main space because the conference rooms are booked 100%
| of the time, or people whose jobs involve talking all day are
| seated there, it's game over. Noise cancelling headphones are
| no match for the 25th "Hey Bob, this is Jason at Intertrode,
| do you have 5 minutes?" of the day.
| Clubber wrote:
| > "Hey Bob, this is Jason at Intertrode, do you have 5
| minutes?"
|
| It's funny how Office Space is still relevant almost 25
| years later.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Mike Judge ended up with the same problem as South Park
| and The Onion.
|
| Silicon Valley ended before NFT, AI, and GameStop. All
| far more ludicrous than anything in fiction.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| ACCOUNTS PAYABLE THIS IS WILHELMINA SPEAKING
|
| JUST A MOMENT
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Active noise cancellation is said to be improving, but it's
| hard to go wrong with a big hunk of plastic if you can find
| a comfortable pair of closed-back circumaural phones. I've
| gone through about three pairs of HD 280. A former
| colleague would wear the same ear pro he uses at the gun
| range.
| definitelyauser wrote:
| 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.
| dboreham wrote:
| Contra-opinion: music significantly improves my
| concentration, but it has to be instrumental or classical
| otherwise brain gets distracted processing the lyrics.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Your word-token-hardware is single-threaded.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Yes I can imagine Wagner or Cardi B being counter
| productive here. Musical white noise -- plaid noise? --
| works wonders though. As another commenter said: EDM has
| been a key factor in my productivity as a software engineer
| over the years.
| scaryclam wrote:
| Me neither. If I'm concentrating I don't want to wear
| headphones all day. Even with my very comfortable ones,
| it's not _that_ comfortable and as you say, it 's not the
| same as silence, or just the quiet of a room without human
| noise.
|
| It's also the inverse problem as well though. Sometimes I
| want to listen to music, but I'm not doing anything that
| requires me to be unapproachable. Heck, sometimes I'm
| looking for a distraction, which is WHY I'm wearing the
| headphones, listening to something distracting!
|
| The idea that wearing headphones should mean "leave me
| alone" just doesn't work for me, and when I want to be left
| alone, wearing headphones doesn't mean I can concentrate
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Do you code with noise cancellation in a sort of sensory
| deprivation mode? Or do you listen to music?
|
| Related to what dboreham wrote in his sibling comment
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38695799): _under
| some specific circumstances specific kinds of music can_
| increase the concentration for me when programming. If
| these circumstances are met, I do sometimes listen to music
| on my noise-cancelling headphones when programming.
|
| But typically I love to program in sensory deprivation mode
| (the same holds for learning).
| d3w4s9 wrote:
| Sorry that's just you. As an amateur musician myself, music
| helps me concentrate. Actually, if I have been writing code
| for a while without music, I would notice that "something
| is missing" and turn on my music. I know a number of
| colleagues who use their headphones all the time as well.
| sedivy94 wrote:
| I'm not not a developer, I work in the IT space and
| require deep focus for a myriad of other tasks (like
| anyone else, I presume). I'm no longer a musician but
| consider myself to have a rich musical background. Music
| does wonders for my focus, but it also generates fatigue.
| So I'm often alternating between music and silence. Have
| you noticed the same thing or is this less common?
| bitzun wrote:
| "that's just you" is dismissive and inaccurate. I can
| only listen to music when I'm slacking and if I begin to
| do real work the music I normally enjoy becomes an
| annoyance and I have to turn it off.
| cgeier wrote:
| It's not "just" him. Just (yes, just) because you know
| some people who wear their headphones all day, doesn't
| make it the standard.
|
| Lots of people (including me) don't like to wear
| headphones all day.
| musicale wrote:
| Sometimes I like music, most often not.
|
| However I definitely get ear + head + hearing fatigue from
| wearing any kind of headphones for more than an hour or
| two.
|
| Noise canceling is nice, but it seems to be hard on my ears
| somehow.
|
| In a private (or home) office, I can play music through
| speakers and it seems to be better than headphones for me.
|
| One thing that is both good and bad about offices is the
| loud air conditioning/ventilation (which of course is
| largely a good thing given covid, etc.) The white noise
| drowns out sound, but it is also fatiguing to my ears. I
| have been in offices during power outages when the
| AC/computers/etc. shut down, it's amazing how quiet it is.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The type of music is very important on whether it works in
| this manner as well as individual personality types. I
| personally find anything with lyrics no different than
| listening to the chatter of the space you're trying to
| avoid.
| schnable wrote:
| When I worked in an open office that required headphones
| for focus, I would put on white noise when music was too
| distracting.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Truly we are all unique snowflakes. I can't exist in
| complete silence (even while coding) it drives me nuts. I
| always have some sort of noise. Usually music without
| lyrics for coding.
|
| that said... I don't like wearing headphones and certainly
| not for extended periods of time. So, "just wear
| headphones" doesn't work for me for an entirely different
| reason.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| > Listening to music while coding severely reduces my
| concentration, and I find it in no way to be a substitute
| for silence.
|
| Me too. I can't work with music in headphones as I
| inevitably start listening to it. It's weird that many
| people don't even consider this a possibility when
| recommending headphones. Well, I guess it's not weird as
| they just aren't affected by it the same way, but still.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I have found that NR + white noise works well to fully
| isolate my mind from external stimulus and focus on the
| code state inside.
| ath3nd wrote:
| We are all to "suck it up" because, for some reason,
| being constantly interrupted is something that we
| supposedly have to be okay with. I say no, let the
| busybodies and loudmouths adapt to us for a change.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| > I say no, let the busybodies and loudmouths adapt to us
| for a change.
|
| Hear Hear! Thought I've never had any luck with this.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I will never actually experience silence, due in part to
| listening to loud music way too often as a kid. Music or
| other low-interaction media is better than the constant
| high-pitch tone I hear ~16x7.
| dogleash wrote:
| rainymood.com
| JohnFen wrote:
| I worked in an open office plan that did the headphones
| thing. I found that made it even more intolerable -- I can't
| stand being in a room with a bunch of people and being cut
| off from my senses. It makes me hyperaware, nervous, and even
| less able to work.
| neilwilson wrote:
| The work was done by IBM in 1975. You need lots of space to
| keep the noise down and you need offices with doors that close.
|
| Why are we still having this discussion fifty years later?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The costs of offices are easier to quantify than the
| benefits.
| oblio wrote:
| Because in the short term it's cheaper to do other stuff.
|
| And ain't nobody going in between this year's bonus and
| executives.
| 2devnull wrote:
| Because we work in different ways now than we did in 1975?
| The work people do is also different. And, the people
| themselves have also changed. A person born in 1980s may be
| more used to 24/7 noise from tv and devices. A 30 year old
| worker in 1975 grew up in a quieter home.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't think people and how they work are much different
| now than in 1975. I have no data, though. That would be an
| interesting study. Do you have data?
| 2devnull wrote:
| I do. The data would be computer sales to businesses. The
| data indicates computer use is now a regular part of many
| jobs, whereas very few jobs in 1970 involved working on a
| computer, based on computer sales data.
| diyftw wrote:
| That generalization certainly doesn't fit with this 1977
| edition human. The loudest 24/7 thing in my house is the
| compressor on my fridge. Silence (and office doors) are
| priceless.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Aren't you just reinforcing the point?
| diyftw wrote:
| "A person born in 1980s may be more used to 24/7 noise"
|
| "1977 edition human" (born in 1977 for those who didn't
| grasp my turn-a-phrase. I hope that's close enough to
| 1980)
|
| And I'm not used to constant noise. So, no.
| 13rac1 wrote:
| You may not recognize the difference, but our brains
| haven't evolved (nature) much in the last couple decades or
| probably centuries. There's little to no chance we have
| truly adapted (nurture) to this 24/7 noise, even plants
| have problems with it: https://www.economist.com/science-
| and-technology/plants-are-... -> https://www.sciencedirect.
| com/science/article/pii/S143917912...
|
| > Plants in the traffic noise treatment group were exposed
| to 16 h of road traffic noise each day for a total of 15
| days, while the control group was kept under complete
| silence. Traffic noise exposure led to significant decrease
| in growth indices of both plant species.
| 2devnull wrote:
| Human change does not require Darwinian selection. Look
| across cultures. That people might tolerate or be most
| comfortable in noisier environments could vary for non-
| heritable reasons. Some people like less stimulation,
| some more. Autism rates have changed faster than our
| genetics also.
| miroljub wrote:
| Let's not pretend that we are something special, and we need to
| focus so much more than other creative workers.
|
| For the majority of work of an average programmer in an average
| corporation, deep focus is highly overrated.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Those workers deserve environments that promote deep focus,
| as well.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > 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.
| ath3nd wrote:
| At least the scorpions don't have the unreasonable
| expectation for you to not freak out when they interrupt you.
| diyftw wrote:
| It is also acceptable to shoo away the scorpions. Much less
| acceptable with Bonnie from HR.
| ath3nd wrote:
| Yes, Bonnie from HR gives me the shudders. The
| enthusiasm!
| IKantRead wrote:
| 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 used in the most extreme
| cases.
|
| Contemporary startup engineering culture is best described as
| _frenetic_. It certainly feels hyper productive (if not
| extremely exhausting for a more traditional, introverted
| programmer), but I 've started to notice a fairly large amount
| of that "productivity" is fixing mistakes a more focused
| programmer would have avoided.
|
| I suspect the long-term impact of open offices my be even more
| deleterious than it's impact on the focus of individual
| programmers.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I was raised by the focused type of programmer, and modern
| startup culture is horrifying to me (and him). I have left
| that world and now am solo engineer in a non-profit where I'm
| responsible for a list of results, not a pile of Jira tickets
| someone made up to look busy.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| That sounds like my ideal job. The longer I've been a
| developer, the more I've come to dislike work that doesn't
| address problems faced by end-users/the org.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Yeah, humans have a major need of purpose.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I couldn't be happier. I am the in-house expert in my
| field, I replaced an agency that was far more expensive
| and incompetent, and I have great hours (9-4:30!) and
| benefits. Oh, and I'm fully remote in an org that's been
| remote since 2013.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That's a scary depiction of the scene. I haven't experienced
| things that extreme, but close enough that I don't doubt you.
|
| It might even be a significant part of why software quality
| isn't where it should be these days.
| politician wrote:
| Inside Facebooks' offices in Seattle circa 2019:
| "Overcrowded pig sty" is an accurate description. The smell
| was overpowering. Two pairs of bathrooms for an entire
| floor of developers packed shoulder to shoulder in an open
| plan hellscape.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I actually really loved the Dexter building. Yes it was
| all that, but I'm an extrovert and some part of my work
| day needs have been unmet for 4 years now.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Great! Go work in an office somewhere.
|
| Guess what? I'm not an extrovert and most of my work day
| needs for about 15 years have been unmet.
|
| Since Covid they are being met.
| ike2792 wrote:
| 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.
| no_wizard wrote:
| >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.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| 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
| roland35 wrote:
| I once heard and now love the phrase "Don't confuse motion
| with progress".
|
| A lot of us are constantly busy but get nothing important
| done!
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| 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 staring at code non-stop in an office environment
| can be draining too. I prefer WFH, and I can peer program
| with devs by calling them on Teams and screen sharing, but
| if I have to be in an office, it wont make much different
| to me, just the risk / wasted time from the commute.
| isodev wrote:
| 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.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| 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.
| dmoy wrote:
| > Contemporary startup engineering culture is best described
| as frenetic.
|
| Also, like... not really engineering per se
| manishsharan wrote:
| 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
| began falling sick one by one (pre covid era). This was also
| where I learnt the hard way that it is possible to get the
| flu twice in the same flu season. It was a hilarious mess.
| Curiously enough the AVP got promoted to VP the next year.
|
| And the following year, the whole office switched to open
| office plan. I think the ability to micro manage people and
| the power trip for managers explains this logic.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| My experience with Canadian "business man, doing business"
| culture supports this.
|
| Their lives are mostly modeling what business is supposed
| to look like. Nevermind it achieves nothing.
|
| When I go home to downtown Vancouver I'm startled at damn
| good-looking everyone is in their suits and pomade-hair, in
| great offices exuding power and dignity. But their GDP per
| capita is crap compared to us schlubs in Seattle.
|
| They must have learned performative-salaryman from the
| British.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Those programmers just don't get that they are part of a
| managerial Broadway musical. They won't even talk, and if
| they do not talk, how can they siiing.
|
| Chat gpt write me a musical about micro management in
| software in 3 acts.
| _rs wrote:
| 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.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| 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.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| There's a circle of hell for anyone who uses story points
| as a productivity measure and not a work-in-progress limit
| internal to the team.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| 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.
| epylar wrote:
| 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.
| djur wrote:
| Doesn't that make it impossible to use story points for
| estimating effort and ensuring people aren't
| overcommitted?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| 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
| mgkimsal wrote:
| > .... 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.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Deadline Driven Development is foolish. Deadlines are good
| to have, but you cannot force good functioning software if
| more time is needed to craft it. You get what you pay for,
| you reap what you sow. If you just want to churn out code
| in unrealistic time spans instead of extended efforts,
| you're going to get a bad product. Instead, cut things that
| can come out later, have developers focus on polish. I
| would rather a very stable and polished MVP over a rushed
| dumpster fire as a dev an end-user who has seen some awful.
| j45 wrote:
| This is a war room approach that is reactive during the
| course of building.
|
| Imagine insane last minute issues or something being entirely
| down.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Yeah, this definitely gets at something. There's a sizable
| (or just noisy?) contingent of devs who prioritize activity
| above actual quality because quality is hard and not
| immediately measureable (supposedly). And it feels designed
| to be overtly anti-intellectual, as if the act of engineering
| is a mostly social act punctuated by the annoying demands
| made by the compiler, the runtime, and customers.
|
| I suspect it's championed at some places because you're
| "leveling everyone up."
|
| Follow the incentives.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Open plan offices took off in larger companies in the
| mid-2000s, and I think it's a classic example of a cargo
| cult.
|
| Executive management looked at the handful of hugely
| successful startups who had open plan offices and thought,
| "It _must_ be these open plan offices, that 's their secret
| sauce! We just need to copy that and we'll be successful
| too!"
|
| ...ignoring survivor bias, because for every hugely
| successful startup who did open plan out of necessity, there
| was a big graveyard of startups who had the same practice and
| failed.
| biztos wrote:
| Is anyone trying to hire only introverted, spectrumy,
| possibly older developers for their startup? Seems like it
| could be a big competitive advantage if you have smart
| managers and don't do foot-guns like open-plan and pairing.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| 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 and
| 8pm most days because I got more work done in those 2-3 hours
| at the end of the day than I did the other eight because of all
| the interruptions.
| bluGill wrote:
| > "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.
| shikon7 wrote:
| If that happens, that's rather the fault of the company and
| the managers of not communicating the current affairs
| clearly enough. You shouldn't need to rely on informal
| channels to find out what the company considers canceled.
| bluGill wrote:
| While you are not wrong, making those formal channels is
| expensive in itself. If the informal channels work they
| can be a lot cheaper. Well maybe, I don't think anyone
| has really studied this including all the subtle issues.
| ath3nd wrote:
| 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.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| You have pretty noisy and messy environments where technically
| challenging programming and other taxing work happens
| successfully (e.g., some trading floor). How much do think the
| whole issue is self selection into preferred work environments?
| ath3nd wrote:
| There is a reason the stereotypical image of these guys is
| them chainsmoking, doing copious amount of drugs (to take the
| edge off), and throwing themselves out of high places.
|
| Work happening "successfully" and people making money doesn't
| mean it's the most efficient or healthy way of working. I am
| happy to throw a % or two of productivity in the short term
| if my workers don't burn out in the long term.
|
| Luckily, research clearly shows that the most successful work
| and the happiest employees happen in quiet places with deep
| focus.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| That stereotypical image is wrong. Also, there is real
| complex stuff created there. Some people like such
| environments and wouldn't like sitting in quiet places -
| being where stuff happens has its benefits, too.
|
| How is success defined in those studies? Honestly curious.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It is crazy that companies will pay someone $300k a year to sit
| in an open office and then wonder why the conference rooms are
| over booked all the time. And then they don't understand why
| they don't want to RTO.
| wildzzz wrote:
| 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 necessarily
| direct line of sight to a window from my chair).
|
| I'm fully aware that commercial real estate is expensive and
| that old office floorplans are not entirely conducive to
| offering everyone an office with a door. There are certainly
| compromises that need to be made when renovating the office to
| give people what they want without simply moving to a brand new
| building. While I'd prefer my own office, just having a noise-
| proof cube where I don't have to stare at everyone walking past
| would be a huge step up from the picnic table style desks where
| it feels like you're sitting at a library computer desk. There
| are plenty of ways to track productivity that don't involve a
| manager being able to stare at everyone working like a
| sweatshop foreman.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > There are plenty of ways to track productivity that don't
| involve a manager being able to stare at everyone working
| like a sweatshop foreman.
|
| I have called those kind of managers "glorified taskmasters"
| in the past, but "sweatshop foreman" is a good enough phrase
| make me want to add it to my repertoire!
|
| It's insulting to me to treat knowledge workers as cogs in a
| machine or workers in a factory. Humans are not made to be
| crammed with other humans in tiny, noisy and poorly
| ventilated and lit spaces with no natural light.
|
| We are told to "suck it up" but we are not paid the bills
| when panic attacks, burnout and other health problems start
| showing up.
|
| As a person who has fought management tooth and nail to give
| myself and my teams the ability to work remotely and a have a
| 4 day work week while paid the same as before, I can tell
| you, it's infinitely better to have time and space, and your
| productivity, creativity and communication doesn't suffer at
| all (we measured it, and many others have done as well).
|
| It's all a question of whether your corporate overlords trust
| you enough.
| manishsharan wrote:
| The best we can get is horse blinders and noise cancelling
| headphones.
| paulcole wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I think it's more fair to say that they're making some of their
| jobs significantly harder and improving the experience for
| others. Plenty of jobs aren't interested in optimizing for
| anyone's personal productivity and happiness -- they're
| optimizing for their business goals.
|
| > There's a reason that many programmers prefer to work from
| home
|
| I think there's many reasons this seems to be true (I say seems
| because the ones who prefer it are very vocal about it and tend
| to (at best) shout down those who disagree) and maximizing
| productivity is probably one of those reasons that they're
| willing to tell their employers.
| aswanson wrote:
| I liken open offices to a situation where I'm balancing a pile
| of plates in both hands and hundreds of other people are in the
| kitchen and can trip me or shove me at will, causing a mental
| stack crash.
| y1426i wrote:
| Open offices exist for the same reason WFH doesn't work, at
| least where it won't work.
|
| I have worked in older organizations, and the culture there is
| that the most productive workers spend relatively more time on
| their work chairs. That is the only way managers have
| traditionally known to get work done from their teams.
|
| An open office is a natural way to ensure everyone is working,
| at least in how those organizations measure productivity.
|
| If these companies move to a closed office, they will have to
| change how they measure productivity, and their culture may not
| allow that.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| The one time I had a heavy dev job (I mostly take sysadmin type
| roles) in an open floorplan, I ended up buying a motorcycle
| helmet with built in audio to isolate myself from
| distractions...it was mostly gregarious sporty (it was a
| sporting goods company), young people (I was the second oldest
| at the company at 32).
|
| I was not well-liked at that job and was happy when they let me
| go.
| danesparza wrote:
| 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.
| phero_cnstrcts wrote:
| I've tried working in the middle of nerf gun fights every
| afternoon for a year. Let's just say I enjoy Home Office a lot.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Surprised not to see a link to Joel Spolsky's (20 year old!) on
| the bionic office with private space for all programmers :
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/ this has
| been known for decades.
| jwrallie wrote:
| I read maybe two or three of these articles here on HN, and I am
| totally convinced that this is true, but my boss is not reading
| HN and has a different opinion. A shared office is also cheaper
| for him, so I need more than forwarding a link to an article to
| convince him.
|
| I would love to hear more about how people actually changed their
| situation, other than the obvious way of looking for another job.
| peteradio wrote:
| You can't you vote with your feet unfortunately.
| lagniappe wrote:
| In my case, eat heavily seasoned high fiber foods. 6 weeks
| tops.
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| I know opinions differ. My best experiences have been when
| sharing a office with one developer, both working on the same
| project. That way, if we had to discuss something, we would not
| disturb anyone else, and if not, we both could work in peace. It
| was easy to see how busy and "deep" the other guy was, and not to
| interrupt him at the wrong time.
| imetatroll wrote:
| I have to pass gas all of the time due to my gut so if you insist
| on me being in an office setting of any kind... prepare yourself
| for the worst.
| getlawgdon wrote:
| Can we be done deriding cubicles now? And how about we put saloon
| doors on them that enable occupants to communicate "not right
| now"? And if they're left open it means: "come on in and interru
| me!" ?
| billy99k wrote:
| My first job out of college (~2007) had an open office plan. The
| development team sat right next to all of the sales people making
| phone calls during the day. When someone made a sale, they would
| scream loud and then ring a bell (loud cheers then proceeded from
| the rest of their team).
|
| This happened at least a dozen times/day. We were allowed to wear
| headphones, but could not listen to anything streaming online. I
| would record 8 hours of streaming radio the night before and then
| transfer it to my Ipod nano in the morning. I was usually so
| sleep-deprived that I didn't have any time to check the recording
| before work. Once/month, my Internet connection would go down and
| I would have 8 hours of white noise (those days were a
| nightmare).
|
| I eventually figured out that I could RDP into my server at home
| and stream audio from there, and listen to it through the RDP
| connection. The Internet filters they were using couldn't detect
| it.
|
| I think what finally made me quit was when I found out management
| had screen-monitoring software installed on all of our computers
| and would review it every hour.
|
| A co-worker discovered it by accident and due to my inquisitive
| nature (which sometimes gets me in trouble), I tried to telnet
| into the listening port we found on his computer (to see what it
| was) and it completely crashed their monitoring software (must
| have been really shitty software). I was hauled in the next day
| and questioned to see if I did this with malicious intent and he
| was fired )I guess they were watching him for awhile and were
| gathering evidence. He had worked with the company for 5 years).
|
| I got out at a good time. The company in question was in the loan
| industry and it melted down a year later in 2008 and the whole
| development team was laid off.
|
| I hated this office experience so much, that since the job I had
| after this, I've only worked remote jobs (and still do) in my
| home office or office space I personally rent. I don't think I
| could ever go back.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| The arch keystone got me thinking. What is a keystone and what
| makes it different to any other stone in the arch? Surely all the
| stones in the arch are needed to hold the structure in place. If
| any stone were to be removed the structure would collapse after
| all.
|
| Most arch stones are precisely cut. Or at least we pretend they
| are precise. The keystone is different because it's an oversized
| wedge that you slide in at the end to pick up the slack. You
| can't cut it precisely because you don't know how big it needs to
| be until it's doing its job. Once in place though, you can trim
| it down to make it look like you knew what you were doing all
| along.
|
| There's a metaphor here, I think, for the style of "engineering"
| we see in software. It's not a value judgement other than to
| acknowledge that, with software, it's ok to be good enough and to
| iterate. Lots of real world engineering is like that, but
| keystones may be an exception.
| picadores wrote:
| The older i get the more i think, the project management
| paragdigm should be one of protecting the productive core at all
| costs from external disruptions.
|
| This includes deriving the actual wanted goals early in the
| project, planning properly and the violently shield the engineers
| by keeping external factors like the management microcosm,
| stakeholders and non-developers busy with busywork, placated with
| blatant lies and overall away from doing damage. Regarding the
| engineer team organiziation - they will work something out.
|
| They don't need that car-production-belt whistle and whip.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Some prefer chaotic backgrounds, while others consider the
| Monastic silence of a monastery truly divine.
|
| For hard problems (months/years), I think it requires cycling
| through both context states for a time. This is something
| nootropics proponents often tend not to recognize.
|
| Some hard problems will persist, no matter the amount of
| resources thrown at the issue. At some point a Plan B becomes C
| though Z, and its time to prune the project scope to ever hit a
| launch date.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus
|
| Quickly recognizing when a team has lost is important. =)
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| I work remote, so I control who interrupts me. I can turn off
| Slack notifications, I can close my email, I can put up a
| calendar entry for 4 hours.
|
| But I still have to do something to control my time. A door isn't
| enough, because someone will just knock or open it. You have to
| put in effort and plan ahead to control your workflow.
|
| A lot of people seem to believe that work should be easy. It's
| actually difficult and complex to work really efficiently. It
| requires knowledge of how to work efficiently, and then it
| requires a lot of people to stick to a process, someone to
| measure it and keep people on track, and continuously changing it
| to improve. That's a lot more than just "don't interrupt me".
| netbioserror wrote:
| Similar issue: My small-ish company used to hand out the emails
| and phone numbers of its programmers. After enough of them
| threatened to leave because our customer-facing offices were
| constantly distracting them from projects, their policy changed
| entirely. Now there is a Jira firewall, managed by a liaison, and
| we get to things when we get to them. A distraction-free
| environment is the only way to get your money's worth from a good
| programmer.
| hackernoteng wrote:
| Open floor plan is why I am way more productive working from
| home. Because of that I go into office about once every three
| months, just so we have in person white-boarding sessions (no
| actual coding work is possible). Hard wood floors, sales guys
| talking loud on phones, people buzzing around the office. It's
| impossible to focus on any non-trivial coding. And no, I'm not
| going to wear noise cancelling headphones all day.
| akasakahakada wrote:
| Current writing something like BLAS from scratch for 2 years. I
| admit that my house is a better work place than my lab. Writing
| loops and let compiler to optimize that for you is easy. But
| thinking in terms of vector, tensor, broadcasting, parallel and
| then convert everything into bit operations is hard. Seriously I
| can't do any low level implementation in office environment.
|
| For high level stuff like architecture design and writing
| application functions, I appreciate pair programming. I think
| that is more effective and creative than working alone. But still
| everyone doing their own stuff in a big room is not my kind in
| this situation.
| omnicognate wrote:
| 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 is "erm, not all of them do".
| I actively enjoy being interrupted to discuss something unrelated
| to my current task, and often return to that task with a fresh
| insight afterwards. I enjoy helping my colleagues with things,
| and doing so helps me build a positive reputation in a way that
| has helped my career. I enjoy camaraderie and conversations about
| my colleagues' lives outside work. I would refuse a job in an
| enclosed office or cubicle unless there were very strong
| compensating factors.
|
| I don't require others to feel the same way, and I don't think
| people are wrong or bad if they prefer greater separation from
| colleagues. Humans are diverse. However, someone who views their
| colleages, their work-related questions and their attempts at
| broader conversation with active disdain is unlikely to be
| someone I want to work with.
| throwaway_fjmr wrote:
| > I actively enjoy being interrupted to discuss something
| unrelated to my current task
|
| wat
| omnicognate wrote:
| > Humans are diverse.
| awelxtr wrote:
| So you're an active participant to the company's office
| politics instead of economic output.
|
| At least you openly admit it.
| omnicognate wrote:
| ... is precisely the sort of aggressive, cynical and
| unpleasant response I'm talking about.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There is no "filtering out" when open plans are the de facto
| standard in an industry and there aren't alternative workplaces
| for those who don't prefer it to go to.
|
| > I enjoy helping my colleagues with things, and doing so helps
| me build a positive reputation in a way that has helped my
| career. I enjoy camaraderie and conversations about my
| colleagues' lives outside work.
|
| This can be achieved with all manner of offices!
|
| > Humans are diverse.
|
| Yes, but there are still distributions of opinions. It seems
| like there are many thinkpieces on why people don't like open
| plans and why they're bad for productivity, but never any in
| defense of them. Perhaps you should write one to give voice to
| that contingent and then we can see how many others have the
| same opinion.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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
| there was very little chit-chat.
|
| American open-plan offices, on the other hand, resemble flea
| markets. Loud, somewhat chaotic, and distracting as hell.
|
| But the Japanese also have a culture that is attuned to open-plan
| offices. When we would bring them to the US, they would be
| uncomfortable with cubicles and offices.
|
| I have found that "one-size-fits-all" solutions, don't really
| work, across cultural boundaries.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| "one-size-fits-all" solutions are the prevailing business
| strategy of investment bankers: Make every company run exactly
| the same, and save on cost by commoditizing the materials and
| people.
| musicale wrote:
| I would hate that due to the visual distractions and lack of
| privacy, but "quiet as a library" is absolutely essential.
|
| It does sound like that office layout (as with most US office
| layouts) is designed to clearly reinforce the status hierarchy.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> clearly reinforce the status hierarchy_
|
| Oh, yeah. Hierarchy is _very_ important, in Japanese business
| culture.
| kevinmershon wrote:
| Rakuten was the first and only bigger corp I've worked at (my
| life has been startups and boutique shops) and so I have had a
| hard time understanding why people don't like open office
| floorplans. Thank you for making me realize why I enjoyed it
| and might not, at another org.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Was it a Japanese office or a foreign office following
| Japanese customs?
| ayuhito wrote:
| I would say it fits in a third category. It's a Japanese
| office that switched to English as its official language
| and hires a lot of foreign engineering talent. These types
| of companies are becoming more and more prevalent in Japan.
|
| It is interesting to note that they can integrate the best
| and worst elements of both aforementioned work cultures.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| You worked in kevinmershon's office?
|
| Either way it's interesting such offices are becoming
| more common in Japan. Could you say more about how they
| integrate the best and worst of both cultures?
| ayuhito wrote:
| I worked for a Japanese corporation where each floor had
| different rules.
|
| One floor had an open-plan layout where people were open to
| chitchat, another open-plan floor that expected everyone to be
| quiet, and there was a floor with reservable cubicles or sound-
| proofed rooms. In general though, I do agree that the culture
| is on the quieter side.
|
| I really enjoyed working there because the level of isolation
| was entirely up to you, depending on your mood.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| this is how most university libraries are set up
| e12e wrote:
| I did a year as an exchange student in secondary school/senior
| high school in Japan. We were close to 50 pupils per class room
| - yet it was much more quiet than my Norwegian classroom with
| half as many pupils.
|
| Not a praise of the outdated Prussian high school system in
| Japan - but another illustration that the culture is different.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Is it outdated? How do the results compare?
| ferbivore wrote:
| Which results? Evaluating school systems is an unsolved
| problem.
| aczerepinski wrote:
| For me it's because my cat won't stop trying to step on my
| keyboard.
| hattmall wrote:
| Senior programmer on management side. Personally when I'm coding,
| yeah, isolated, distraction free environment is my demand. I'm
| knocking stuff out, achieving flow state. Anything else I feel
| frustrated that I'm not performing at my peak. I liken it to
| brain surgery. You wouldn't expect to be well received if you
| just pop into the OR to discuss getting new scalpels in the
| middle of an operation.
|
| That being said, it's really the crux of the issue with work from
| home that the trajectory of the company doesn't really depend on
| individual workers hitting their maximum output. An individual
| having the best coding experience is rarely the ideal option for
| the company. It is far more important that the team moves in a
| cohesive formation. If the distractions truly cut productivity in
| half we can double the number of seats. Going too far and too
| fast without focused guidance results in deadtime and technical
| debt. It's a tortoise and the hare situation. Would we rather
| have 10 rabbits moving one brick at a time or 20 turtles strapped
| together towing a trailer with a full stack of bricks.
|
| It's also not like we haven't tried to make remote work and other
| options be successful. The reality is that it's something we can
| pretty effectively A/B test. The results have been fairly
| consistent across fields and even companies. Physically
| collaborative environments yield better and faster results.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > If the distractions truly cut productivity in half we can
| double the number of seats.
|
| Usually salaries cost more than offices.
|
| > Going too far and too fast without focused guidance results
| in deadtime and technical debt.
|
| Focused guidance requires intentional communication. Not hoping
| people will overhear the right conversations.
|
| > It's also not like we haven't tried to make remote work and
| other options be successful. The reality is that it's something
| we can pretty effectively A/B test. The results have been
| fairly consistent across fields and even companies. Physically
| collaborative environments yield better and faster results.
|
| Show the data.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > Usually salaries cost more than offices.
|
| Yes, they do. But productivity is not linear.
|
| > Show the data.
|
| I don't have the data, but the reasons behind agile are
| exactly that - extremely collaborative environment.
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| > An individual having the best coding experience is rarely the
| ideal option for the company
|
| I think a company that wants to keep talent for as long as
| possible without offering FAANG level salaries should
| reconsider this position. Hiring is super expensive and risky.
| If you have good people, you want to keep them. I think
| offering flexible, meaningful and enjoyable work is a great way
| to keep people around longer and if it matters to them that
| they have a space where they can focus, I would give it to
| them. Creating an environment where they are less happy
| probably will make them look elsewhere.
|
| That said, I do agree that siloed work comes with a set of
| issues, but I think there are other solutions to the problem.
|
| > It's also not like we haven't tried to make remote work and
| other options be successful. The reality is that it's something
| we can pretty effectively A/B test. The results have been
| fairly consistent across fields and even companies. Physically
| collaborative environments yield better and faster results.
|
| I have never heard this and I don't even know how you would
| measure it. There are so many variables this would affect, not
| to mention, how do you even measure productivity short and long
| term? Do you also measure turnover? I don't think we actually
| know nor do I think results from one place translate over to
| another. I've done both and both have worked and have had their
| own set of challenges. My personal take is that hiring good
| people matters more than whatever setup you have. Remote gives
| you a bigger pool of people to pick from and is desirable by
| many, so based on that I think that it can give a very big
| competitive advantage.
| acheong08 wrote:
| I often go in so that if necessary, I can pop in and code on
| their computers a bit if my teammates get stuck somewhere. Yes
| it's like babysitting but it takes so much longer to walk them
| through & explaining how to fix it over chat
| whitej125 wrote:
| Favorite office setup as a programmer - was early 2000's.
|
| First key feature - 50% of the exterior building walls was
| windows, the other 50% had offices.
|
| Second key feature - cubicle design. It was staggered duets of
| cubes. Great for privacy... and at best made it easy to turn
| around and talk to 2 other people if needed. Best of all... each
| cube had a full window instead of your classic wall. And these
| windows would all allign so that you could see straight out to
| the outside if you wanted. You had privacy - but still daylight.
|
| Most "cube farms" I see are a sea of interior cubes completely
| surrounded by wall of exterior offices. That's depressing. Or we
| see an open office concept where everyone has light but 0 privacy
| which is hard for concentration.
|
| This particular design that I got to work in circa 2002-2005 was
| delightful at least for me (and then we moved offices and that
| design sadly didn't carry over).
|
| I miss well designed cubes.
| chadash wrote:
| My ideal is somewhere in the middle. I don't necessarily need a
| private office, but a shared space with a small team. This way,
| I'm privy to all conversations relevant to me. Knowing what's
| going on often trumps the productivity gains of a quiet work
| environment.
|
| The issue is large open offices where I'm also privy to all the
| other distractions from other teams that _aren 't_ relevant to
| me.
| axpy906 wrote:
| If I had an office with a door that I could shut, I would go to
| it. No offices are like that, unless you are some big wig that,
| doesn't code, and hence I am not going to any office any time
| soon.
| pard68 wrote:
| At has been echoed in the article and in the comments, so many
| people are different. I write and run software in my head long
| before it gets into a text file. This is very mental work but I
| could do it at the Super Bowl successfully. I zone out like a pro
| and can get completely lost in my head with no fear of
| distractions.
|
| Conversely when I am debugging or doing more creative stuff like
| systems design work, I love distractions. For some reason the
| momentary interruptions really help me reapproach the problem
| from a new angle.
|
| When all else fails a crack open a beer, my very best work has
| always been done while sipping a cold one.
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| I find working in shared office of up to 2-3 people to be doable.
| 2-3 people can learn and agree to be quiet most of the time. If
| you have a meeting, do it in a meeting room, respect each other's
| privacy, etc.
|
| But it highly depends on who you're getting as an office mate.
| I've had mostly good experiences, but I've had one very bad
| experience too.
| shadowtree wrote:
| Has office with door - but 15 Slack channels with notifications
| on. Plus a twitch stream for some game plus a endless youtube of
| a "relax/study" channel.
|
| You think nobody sees what's on engineers desktops?
|
| Of course they're all Carmack-level geniuses...
|
| Literally sandwiched between breathless "How Github CoPilot
| produces 80% of our code" articles from the likes of Shopify and
| "How laying off a thousand more fixed my stock" from the
| Spotifys.
| Stokley wrote:
| I think there's something to be said about the benefits of a
| collaborative environment. Junior Devs may be discouraged to
| approach senior devs with questions if it feels like they're
| walled off from one another
| talkingtab wrote:
| My analogy for some kinds of programming is mental juggling. Good
| programmers, juggle lots of balls at one time: the problem
| components, constraints, other problem elements, production
| issues, reliability issues, all the possible solutions.
|
| A programmer starts with a couple of these, gets them in the air,
| then adds more and more concepts. When I am good I can juggle
| lots of them and see how they interoperate.
|
| Once all the balls in the air, whirling around like some sort of
| planetary system orbiting a sun, they can coalesce into -- an
| idea, a solution, or something.
|
| If this gets disturbed, all those balls come tumbling down. This
| is not a 30 second thing, this can be an hours thing. Or more.
|
| Non programmers do not understand this process. I believe.
| englishspot wrote:
| I've found open plan works well when it's a quiet environment.
| but putting programmers together with the sales folks.. probably
| not a good idea.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Private office with doors? I don't need an office at all, I WFH!
| bluGill wrote:
| Nobody should have an open office policy. Anyone who says they
| have that is either lieing. Either they don't believe in such a
| policy and hope you don't interrupt, or they really do believe in
| it - except they are never in the office anyway.
| cocodill wrote:
| I ctrl + f the article for porn, that didn't satisfy me
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| God. That website literally has one ads for every few paragraphs.
| incomingpain wrote:
| We don't, we can work from home instead.
|
| I'll talk personally. I'm autistic(like what 75% of
| programmers?). Interruptions can potentially ruin my day.
|
| If I'm working in an open concept or cube office, there needs to
| be perfect silence the entire day. If not, I basically can't
| work.
| tamimio wrote:
| Open office layouts might work for some jobs like sales or
| similar, but I always argued that even the desk placement has an
| impact. For example, I personally prefer to have a wall behind me
| instead of others walking or standing or chatting behind me. It's
| just a big distraction, plus the usual interruptions that you get
| because you are sitting next to them. Additionally, if you are
| sensitive to noises and sounds like me, it's even worse. In one
| of my jobs, it was like that and - since it was in engineering -
| the workshop was next to the office and you can imagine all kinds
| of noises. The worst part is I tried to explain that this
| environment is the worst for anything beyond just filling forms
| or doing presentations, but they never changed anything and even
| remote work was discouraged. I had to leave that eventually
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I e actually never seen an office with that setup from startup,
| to mid and multi nat corps.
| kristjank wrote:
| I think it's also important to recognize that companies tend to
| accumulate people with very little respect for other people's
| time. Sometimes you need to Pavlov your coworker into writing
| things down to discuss at a later time, and that you're not mad
| at them, just busy.
|
| Pomodoro technique also helped me shape my focus state into
| smaller, less efficient, but more predictable portions. By
| scheduling interruptions, I figured out it's a lot easier to
| handle breaking out and into flow stat when you're training that
| every 25 minutes.
| yousif_123123 wrote:
| 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/brainstorming together yields way better results than
| solo work. I really like one time he was trying to see how to
| open the chrome debugger to debug the chrome debugger, and I just
| knew how to do it (same shortcut while focussed on open debugger)
| since I had done it by mistake :D
|
| I am convinced that you get more in a collaborative environment
| having a few devs sitting next to each other in pairs/small
| groups that they enjoy being with than anything else. IMO with
| remote work you get hidden inefficiencies that the company can
| attempt to fix by just hiring more people in the team (and a
| culture of let's do less meeting, less face to face, more work)
| takes over and that 1+1=more than 2 environment I was very
| excited about is gone..
|
| Can someone who is a fan of remote work tell me how a new grad
| excited about writing code could find a mentor and really up
| their game in the remote world with what's becoming "standard"
| way of doing meetings etc?
|
| A counterargument to what I describe is how successful open
| source projects have always been remote with passionate people
| working on them
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I think the interruptions in a group setting have huge
| disastrous effects as nobody really ever gets into a good flow
| state.
|
| I'm sure it's useful for training and mentorship, but that's
| frankly not your employer's problem these days. People switch
| jobs every year, and if you train up staff only their next
| company is really going to reap the benefits. If learning on
| the job raises retention then it's only marginal. If anything
| it makes people "worth more" and they more easily find the next
| gig that comes with a pay bump
|
| You can easily skill up by:
|
| - watching conference videos on YouTube
|
| - during code review
|
| - go on your lang subreddit or forums and read about how other
| people skin their cats
|
| What you want is basically unstructured interruption based code
| review ~ which is nice for the junior but horrible for
| productivity over all
| mablopoule wrote:
| Too much interruption is bad, I agree, but there are some
| type of skills / mindset that are 100x times simpler to gain
| by contact with colleagues than by training on your own (even
| when looking at forums). Especially on the things that you
| wouldn't not think about improving.
|
| I had the luck of working with a dude who was extremely good
| at analyzing data, simply by loading json files in sublime
| text, doing a mix of pretty-printing, multi-cursors changes
| (with usually 1000+ cursors), regex-foo, playing with buffers
| and other linux commands. It was a weird set of skills that
| was truly magic to behold, and not amount of Youtube
| conference or code review could have replaced that.
|
| There are some coding livestream that can help with that, but
| it's not as efficient as being in the room as talented
| peoples.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| I highly, highly disagree. Getting advice on the spot is
| often critical. And rarely will you get good practical advice
| like "always do a dry build locally from the command line" on
| the forums.
|
| I can't even count how many times I had to tell other
| engineers, that they have to run a clean build locally...
|
| Not to mention, that mentorship can be useful just for the
| processes that are present within the company.
| GoToRO wrote:
| You got more, maybe the company got more, the senior got less:
| two jobs, only one pay. Now with remote work, companies really
| have to carve out budget and time to train people. They don't
| like that.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Biggest thing is changing cultural dynamics to make maximal
| efficiency of remote work. Which includes that _sometimes_ ,
| you get a team of people together temporarily in person to
| really focus and iterate on issues, but we all know the
| _majority_ of time, this isn 't needed for proper
| collaboration.
|
| As far as excitement and collaboration goes: this is a culture
| and communication problem. If your company hasn't done a good
| job of training people to use the proper tools of collaboration
| they're not doing it right.
|
| Same with mentorship, it should be done as a (possibly
| rotating) thing by people who are trained to do just that: be
| good mentors. This is not a burden that should fall on the
| uninitiated. This should also have concrete expectations for
| everyone involved. Its a job in and of itself, after all.
|
| All of these things point to cultural company deficits, they're
| not an inherently immutable thing that is a downside of remote
| work.
| fritzo wrote:
| In the past I've participated in weekly pair coding sessions or
| group coding sessions, say 2-4 hours on a Friday afternoon.
| That was with an open source project. The meetings included
| both maintainers and newer contributors.
|
| Maybe look around for an active open source project you'd like
| to contribute to, and ask around its community and propose a
| regular pair/group coding session?
|
| Edit: Crucially, we all took turns "driving", even during a
| single meeting. Sometimes someone wanted help on a branch, and
| they started driving and then someone else "took the wheel" for
| a few minutes then passed it back.
|
| I found our interactions were similar to session-style sports,
| like skateboarding or bouldering. We all attempted a challenge
| together and could see how each other approached the problem.
| As in sports, sometimes even knowing something is possible is
| all you need.
| ajb wrote:
| Mentorship doesn't have to be interactive. My first boss mainly
| mentored me over email. In fact, my first job largely worked
| over email and it was a bit of a culture shock when the next
| one was largely instant message based and also had daily
| meetings as well. I felt a bit like I had gone back to infant
| school.
|
| It may be a bit harder now because as programming became more
| high level, the cadence of development went up. However I think
| the skill set that you gain when you are force to work at a
| lower cadence (and spend more time "sharpening the axe") is
| still valuable.
| tehnub wrote:
| When I onboarded a junior engineer in 2021 I had a one hour
| scheduled Zoom call every morning for the first three or four
| months, and we'd Zoom usually at least another hour ad-hoc in
| the afternoon. He would screen share, I would screen share, and
| we got a lot of learning and programming done that way. You
| have to have a culture of people dropping Zoom links at any
| time and being ready to respond within say, five minutes most
| of the time. Or at least that's what worked for me.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I am a _huge_ fan of mentorship; I benefited from it early in
| my career, and I strive to offer it to others now. I don 't
| think that requires an open office at all, though. I think
| mentorship works even better if you're in a quiet environment
| where you can talk comfortably and not worry about bothering
| the people around you.
|
| That said, I can attribute _one_ positive effect in my career
| to having worked in an open office. Early in my career, I
| happened to overhear someone on the phone dealing with an Open
| Source licensing issue (and I genuinely do find Open Source
| licensing interesting), went over to chat with them afterwards,
| ended up finding out about the company 's Open Source review
| process, one thing led to another, and not long afterwards I
| co-ran that process company-wide (for a 100k+ person company),
| which I really enjoyed and which provided a great deal of
| visibility into all the work happening in the company.
|
| I don't think "happened to overhear one side of someone's
| phonecall and strike up a good conversation about it" is a
| "benefit" I'd say is _worth_ the pain of an open office, but I
| still want to acknowledge it.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Well... I have a counter example of a failure in FOSS,
| because of remoteness of the responsible department:
|
| At IBM working in a satellite office, I wanted to contribute
| to Jenkins. The fact that any person with the authority to
| allow me to do that was "behind an office door". Multiple
| emails back and forth - I ended up ditching the idea of
| getting the approval and quit IBM.
|
| Closed doors should be for focus time, which should not be
| "all the time". Having small team offices and quiet rooms -
| can contribute to people's ability to focus. But personal
| offices is just another door that stops people from
| collaborating will inevitably stop a lot of valuable
| collaboration.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > 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.
| treprinum wrote:
| You could reach "generals effect" by being a listener to
| skilled dev's musings - sometimes all one needs to unblock is
| to tell somebody else about what the problem is and the
| solution suddenly pops up without any contribution from the
| listener. So you could form a symbiotic relationship with a
| skilled dev - you'd learn their tricks and they'd use you as
| their "unblocker".
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| > I am convinced that you get more in a collaborative
| environment having a few devs sitting next to each other in
| pairs/small groups that they enjoy being with than anything
| else.
|
| Like an open zoom meeting where people unmute themselves only
| they need to ask something?
|
| With the additional focus-aiding utility provided by services
| like focusmate?
|
| Similar to people gaming online with audio chat but more
| disciplined.
|
| Combining home office with virtual open floor communication on
| demand.
| plasticchris wrote:
| I think pair programming is way better remote, when you can
| share screens.
| wesselbindt wrote:
| The primary means I've seen it happen by is by being part of a
| team that does pair programming rather than code reviews. In
| general I've seen it do wonders for team alignment, integration
| speed, and ramping up new colleagues, junior or otherwise. It
| does take a concerted effort to learn and do well though. There
| are best practices, and putting two random programmers behind
| the same computer does not necessarily mean they'll find and
| apply those.
|
| I'm curious to see if there's been studies on its efficacy, and
| whether or not those studies agree with my entirely anecdotal
| experience.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| The most in sync i've ever been with a team was playing end-
| game raids in MMO's using ventrilo. huddles, meet, and zoom
| just aint the same. I've never tried discord though.
| nevinera wrote:
| While I don't really _disagree_ with any of this, I want to raise
| a point from the other direction - it's possible (and for some of
| us, absolutely necessary) to build software such that holding a
| large "structure of thoughts and possibilities" in your head is
| not required.
|
| I find myself largely incapable of doing so, open-plan office or
| not, and have compensated by adopting development approaches that
| break problems down in consistent enough ways (into small enough
| pieces) that the structures I have to pick up and put down are
| never all that complex. Which is good, because they fall out of
| my head just all the time. ADHD, a very poor memory for detail,
| and a role that has me responsible for juggling many tasks
| concurrently would _destroy_ my productivity if this article were
| universal truth.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I _hate_ working in an open-plan office. But
| the impact it has on my output is not because the interruptions
| affect my flow, it's because the constant social contact stresses
| the heck out of me >.<
| skadamat wrote:
| Stack Overflow / Fog Creek famously embraced private offices:
| https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-i...
| racl101 wrote:
| Open plan is great for juniors, but not so much for seniors with
| a ton of responsibilities already, and who now, the juniors look
| to for mentoring.
| lbriner wrote:
| And so the can of worms opens again!
|
| No. Not everyone wants or needs a private office with a door. It
| doesn't always make us more productive. It is not always better
| to work from home. Open plan offices are not always bad. Most of
| my day is not spent working on something so complicated or
| advanced that interuption will screw me over. I am spending most
| of my day building block towers because I can split most of my
| work into small pieces.
|
| On the other hand, if distraction is a problem, as someone else
| said, it isn't the open plan office which is at fault. It is
| planning your time; setting DnD when you are actually doing
| something difficult; it is making sure that people don't
| randomnly call your best engineers on the phone whenever they
| have problem but they instead use chat or email as an async
| method instead.
| ozim wrote:
| Everyone wants to be in some control of their space and
| thoughts.
|
| I don't have to work on some advanced grand vision to not like
| being available all the time. I am also not claiming that I am
| going to be super productive when I close the door.
|
| It is not my fault not setting DnD it - this is what triggers
| me - no I don't have to set DnD if someone wants something from
| me they should make sure it actually IS important, they should
| make sure they got their stuff right by trying out things and
| thinking about what they have to do and what tried and what
| they really want to ask.
|
| Then they can also send me an email, send me IM so I can reply
| as soon as I get to it.
|
| Coming to me 9:00 when I am still taking my coat off and
| opening laptop - asking questions well that is not my problem
| not setting DnD.
| nexus6 wrote:
| Headphones are my virtual room with door.
| ac26 wrote:
| It feels like there's a lot of productivity theory associated
| with private offices versus open office but I think the issue is
| rooted deeper than that. This is an organizational decision and
| it's one where it needs to be made with the organization's core
| objectives.
|
| However, what it sometimes sounds to me is that there is this
| hope of a magic combination to crack productivity effectiveness
| through open offices or closed offices (or any other low level
| leveraged idea, like return to office vs remote office). The
| reality is that any configuration can work if the leaders of the
| organization are cognizant of the ramifications on the different
| employed individuals and address them accordingly -- but I
| believe most skip this chapter in leadership training.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Having worked in both open floor plan and private offices (9 vs 8
| years respectively) I've come to the conclusion it just doesn't
| matter.
|
| What matters is the culture. A culture of "I'm working, only
| interrupt me only when necessary and keep the chit chat to a
| minimum, and retreat to a private space for long conversations"
| is basically the key. That and noise cancelling headphones.
| oopsthrowpass wrote:
| 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
| stainablesteel wrote:
| i'm the same, the morning is the most important time and i hate
| when people initiate small talk when i want to focus
| nyc111 wrote:
| Not directly related but I noticed that I can be most productive
| and focus best in a cafe where there is a continuous white noise.
| Why doesn't this happen in an open office? Also as I see in 40's
| movies, the newsroom of newspapers were open offices and I can
| imagine concentrating there. That must be an interesting
| collection of noises, typwriters, telephone conversations, joking
| around etc. etc...
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| My favorite work environment is being in a team-sized conference
| room (3-6 people). Conversations tend to be relevant and I can
| tune out any that aren't.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| A 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.
| gwnywg wrote:
| Doors, kind of furniture I'm missing lately... With kids at home
| doors need to be equipped with a lock. And it helps to have
| ensuite too...
| vGPU wrote:
| Because my ADHD means that if I don't have a closed door I will
| literally never get anything done.
| zubairq wrote:
| Very good article, and well explained I thought
| javier_e06 wrote:
| Silence among silence is emptiness. Silence among noise is true
| silence.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| The fact is that there are different sorts of people. Some people
| know what it's like to do deep, sometimes difficult, independent
| work on their own. These people have all been ICs in some field.
| There are also people who have been ICs who have never known such
| a feeling. And then there are people who have only ever been
| managers, who also have never known such a feeling.
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