Losing my mind..
Writing code is hard.. being creative is hard.. staying focused can be hard. All of these are REALLY hard when you work in an open office environment (i.e. all the desks are in one big room!).
For those of you who do not design software, try to imagine writing an essay with five coversations and ringing telephones all around you. Try to imagine coming home day after day feeling like you are no closer to finishing that essay than you were when you started.
God help me.
posted by TinyElvis @ 7:05 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Many companies seem to think that making people sit out in the open fosters better communication between workers. I suppose it does, but it has some pretty negative effects too.
Being a developer myself I have to say that there are times when you just have to be able to lock yourself away in order to get anything done. The amount of wasted time when you have to deal with interruptions is absolutely horrendous.
Many people forget that when you are in the zone working on a problem, and something interrupts you, it can take 5 minutes to get back to where you were... and let's not even consider the higher bug-count that results.
Our company works on around 2 developers per office. All the offices are next to each other, and there's a large communal area right outside. The doors don't usually get closed... but they CAN be. When there's only a couple of people working in close proximity it's a lot easier to keep the distractions down.
Of course a closed door is only useful if it actually works - if people are knocking on it every 5 minutes it does no good (and have you noticed that people knock QUIETLY, do they think it'll cause less disturbance???).
I think the threat of a door being closed is worth more than it actually being closed.
Communal environments can work in some situations, but if there ae multiple projects being worked on, maybe it's a better idea to split the larger group into smaller, more focused teams. As long as there's good communication this should work for everyone.
Here's a way to remove some distractions... Make people wear headphones... turn those damn speakers off... get rid of the annoying 15-second long "You've got mail" announcements... make people turn the ringer down on their phone
Oh, I could go on, and on, and on....
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