Why do programmers need private offices with doors? (Do Not Disturb)
Why do programmers need private offices with doors? (Do Not Disturb)
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Why do programmers need private offices with doors? (Do Not Disturb)
13 comments
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The reason our corporate overlords went to open office plans is that they are much less expensive than actual offices. All the other reasons were bullshit to justify enshittification.
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Then you throw in a little ADHD
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I always thought about this. What about those with disabilities, like ADHD? Can companies really maintain their "equal opportunity employer" position while stripping privacy in the workplace? That's an over generalization for moving to an open office.
They will make a few exceptions then at some point say "that's enough" when all the employees need is less stimulation and more privacy
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I mean, personally, I will never work in an office other than my home ever again.
This still highlights every teams call I get roped into
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And that’s why I like working from home
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Joke's on me. 100% wfh, but hours of zoom meeting a week.
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So they can listen to Aphex Twin at max volume with their robot ears and not frighten all the non-robots.
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What a great article. Practical and poetic.
It would have been nice to have a connection made to Flow, since that's what was being alluded to throughout, but maybe excluding Flow was deliberate in some way I'm missing?
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Sounds a lot like what Joel Spolsky was advocating for since 2003, although now it's easier since most people already have a private office, just not in "the office".
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So you can lock them in.
If I remember correctly there was a Japanese videogame studio who did that in the 80’s they locked their development team in the office. I can’t find the article any more though.
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Or we could just work remotely, which is far more productive.
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I particularly enjoyed a recent company meeting that spent considerable time talking about the importance of flow state. It had an awkward pregnant pause when someone (usually very quiet) unmuted to ask, "is the policy to increase the number of days we must spend in our open-plan office kind of undermining this?". Literally all of our directors just shifted on their seats hoping another would answer that.
Eventually, HR director stated "Not at all, that's what headphones are for!"
Which was particularly delightful, as our tech director had only 20 minutes before stated how he would like to discourage people sitting in the office in silos with their headphones on.
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13 comments
It's not programming specific, reducing distractions for any worker is a good thing for productivity