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I'm making this thread to hopefully get a general consensus in what a "normal" environment for a coder to be in, and ways you have figured out to concentrate better. I work in a studio environment, and often around me there are people talking, having meetings or playing back video. It's nothing out of the ordinary for them, but for me sometimes it makes problem solving impossible if I get a sudden distraction. Music that I've listened to a lot can help a little (predictable) or noise can drown it out a bit. Ear plugs can also help a bit but I can still hear things in the background. Silence is essential for me when I'm in a train of thought, otherwise it doesn't matter as much when I'm doing things that are more routine. So my question is, is this normal? I guess I can say I've never worked somewhere that's solely a group of programmers. I know some of you work from home, which is safe to say is quiet.
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May 13, 2014 15:46
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I've got a quiet, pretty private place to code, post, or whatever: Then again, government job  If people yacking takes too much out of you, consider some good ear phones and some music or even the radio. Another thing I found out now that I actually have such a chair is that an ergonomic chair that you don't need to get up out of or even fidget in for 4+ hours at a time is a godsend. They're rated up to 8 hours (or as I put it, "poopsock") but I'm going to assume you could do things like take a lunch, go for a walk, or whatever if you wanted. A chair at the right height for your knees and hips with good arm rests and some back support is a pretty big deal. So is doing some basic ham/back/chest stretches. Also, look into getting a whiteboard, and just finding a quiet place to go hide in if you need people to gently caress off for a while. If there really is no sort of a spare office, closet, hallway or whatever, just go chill in your car or walk around outside. Never underestimate the power of a good walk and some nature.
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May 13, 2014 18:48
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Everyone gets headphones at my office(which I picked out myself, to ensure maximum quality and noise cancellation for the budget), because otherwise the company would grind to a halt with the "soft side" yelling at each other down the hall with their doors open. Of course this assumes you can work with music playing. I think it's important to bring this up and put forward the expectation that your velocity/efficiency is going to be lower as long as interruptions are present.
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May 13, 2014 21:09
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I really, really don't understand the whole 'open' floor plan thing. Let's take a trade that requires intense focus and concentration and then take 30 engineers and stick them in a room together. Also let's remove all the soundproofing to "facilitate communication." Wait, what do you mean our project is running behind schedule??? I'm lucky now I work from home in an office tucked away deep within my garage. I can't even hear trucks driving past in there, it's basically a cave.
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May 13, 2014 23:27
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revmoo posted:I really, really don't understand the whole 'open' floor plan thing. Let's take a trade that requires intense focus and concentration and then take 30 engineers and stick them in a room together. Also let's remove all the soundproofing to "facilitate communication." Wait, what do you mean our project is running behind schedule??? This plus one micromanager rear end in a top hat that needed his customer support minion under his wing all the loving time.
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May 14, 2014 00:21
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gently caress them posted:I've got a quiet, pretty private place to code, post, or whatever: I get distracted by the radio, because if it's anything I haven't heard before I'm sometimes eager to know what it is or just distracted because it's unpredictable. The chair and desk is a good point. For me, mine kind of stuck because the "desk" (which actually forms out from the wall) is at the wrong height and if I adjust my chair then my feet aren't in a good resting position on the floor. This always bothers me so I sometimes sit cross legged, sit on one leg, or put my feet up on some tupperware boxes of wires. My chair sucks and I don't know how my boss would feel about getting my own since he seems to have matched all furniture very carefully. He has tours come through so the look of the office I think is very important to him. Whiteboard is a good idea, and my boss has considered it. I like to take physical notes and have a folder for every project. He bought a storage place which we talked about maybe turning into an office for me but it would mean running an ethernet cable down a long hallway for internet, so it's been held off on for quite a while. I have a really nice place to walk to, but it's not doable in the winter months of course. By the way is that another whiteboard blocking the entry way? xpander posted:Everyone gets headphones at my office(which I picked out myself, to ensure maximum quality and noise cancellation for the budget), because otherwise the company would grind to a halt with the "soft side" yelling at each other down the hall with their doors open. Of course this assumes you can work with music playing. I think it's important to bring this up and put forward the expectation that your velocity/efficiency is going to be lower as long as interruptions are present. Music is sometimes really good but other times I wish I could have pure silence. There are moments I get distracted just by thinking of people that could be looking at me. revmoo posted:I really, really don't understand the whole 'open' floor plan thing. Let's take a trade that requires intense focus and concentration and then take 30 engineers and stick them in a room together. Also let's remove all the soundproofing to "facilitate communication." Wait, what do you mean our project is running behind schedule??? It's a studio, so it makes sense for everyone except programmers. I'm moving right across the street from my work but I'm going to see if I can push to work from home most of the time, although he seems pretty strict about nothing leaving the place. The personal projects I've done at home have given me far more concentration than work ever has. When my surroundings disappear I start to forget for a moment where I am is when I know I'm in the mode.
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May 14, 2014 01:04
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No, it's a door  When you adjust chair height, make sure your knees are higher than your hips if at all possible. If necessary, put something under your feet to raise your legs up. Does wonders. And of course you should be wearing arch supports. INSOLES. If you're a programmer you can afford to go grab some right now, so do so TOMORROW. Step on the fancy machine thing that tells you what kind to get and do it, you won't regret it. I feel like a salesperson, but really, it's a matter of "how mobile do you want to be in 30 years."
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May 14, 2014 04:29
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Our company comprises 2 of us doing dev work, 3 on the phone doing support, a couple of directors and an intern. We're all in a big room all together, it can get pretty distracting. I have high quality, over ear isolating headphones. I mostly listen to music but I'm also a musician so that can get pretty distracting. When I really need to concentrate, I go to simplynoise.com and put on some brown noise. Works a treat.
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May 15, 2014 22:28
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revmoo posted:I really, really don't understand the whole 'open' floor plan thing. Let's take a trade that requires intense focus and concentration and then take 30 engineers and stick them in a room together. Also let's remove all the soundproofing to "facilitate communication." Wait, what do you mean our project is running behind schedule??? I'm working in an environment like that and I enjoy it a lot. However it is only 4 people, not 30. I can see 30 being a problem. But for us it is super useful to just look over at the other person and chat for a minute at any time, don't have to leave the room. I would hate to have to walk to my coworkers office for little things. But here we can easily keep in sync and ask each other little confirmation questions without breaking our stride on what we are doing. It is important to be understanding if the other guy asks to wait a few minutes before giving an answer. It is also a nice way to keep tabs on what everyone is working on so you know if you can jump in and help someone or ask them to help you with something. Otherwise, we work in a office at the far end of a building so it is usually quiet except for sounds of keyboards typing. That really helps us as half the team says they get distracted by listening to music so the other half (the cool half) listen to music on earbuds.
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May 16, 2014 00:24
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revmoo posted:I really, really don't understand the whole 'open' floor plan thing. Let's take a trade that requires intense focus and concentration and then take 30 engineers and stick them in a room together. Also let's remove all the soundproofing to "facilitate communication." Wait, what do you mean our project is running behind schedule??? Some assholes managed to convince people that it was a good idea without actually doing any research on it. It sounds good in theory since it's all "communication and people being open" but in practice it ends up being noisy and distracting. The best experience I've had was 4 people in a medium sized office that are all working on the same thing. It doesn't get noisy enough to be distracting and it actually fosters a little communication.
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May 16, 2014 04:06
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NovemberMike posted:Some assholes managed to convince people that it was a good idea without actually doing any research on it. It sounds good in theory since it's all "communication and people being open" but in practice it ends up being noisy and distracting. The best experience I've had was 4 people in a medium sized office that are all working on the same thing. It doesn't get noisy enough to be distracting and it actually fosters a little communication. Walls cost money and it's cheaper to build out an "open" office with greater worker density. Offices with walls and doors are for management.
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May 16, 2014 05:39
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SamDabbers posted:Walls cost money and it's cheaper to build out an "open" office with greater worker density. Offices with walls and doors are for management. One great exception for it being "normal" to have programmers isolated away in a quiet environment that I already knew about was Intel. All their office workers are in the same cubical grid, regardless of position or leadership. Though I don't really know how distracting the environment is. The coders could be all in one corner opposite from office workers that need to communicate in person more.
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May 16, 2014 13:34
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PlesantDilemma posted:I'm working in an environment like that and I enjoy it a lot. However it is only 4 people That's not an open plan, that's just an office. The last big open plan place I worked at had IT and Product Development (about 45 people) in a single room. It was asinine. Funny thing is, I don't really get distracted that easily so it was never much of a problem for me, but I could tell that it caused a lot of problems for other people. The problem is, even if it's identified as the problem that it is, you're never going to convince management that they need to buy a new building/new furniture/whatever CapEx needs to happen to move away from the open plan. So these companies are hosed.
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May 16, 2014 18:38
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I've got a private office but I still have too much going on to get any real development work done there. Most things happen at home where I use headphones to drown out the fiance. Side note -- women really hate it when you completely ignore them even if they are talking to you through your headphones.
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May 16, 2014 19:37
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Open floor plans suck because everyone can see me when I get my 3rd Red Bull of the day from the community fridge.wwb posted:Side note -- women really hate it when you completely ignore them even if they are talking to you through your headphones. gently caress off.
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May 16, 2014 19:53
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Is this a "post your work environment" thread? I suppose I'm a minimalist  I use these to drown out everyone else.
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May 16, 2014 19:58
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wwb posted:I've got a private office but I still have too much going on to get any real development work done there. Most things happen at home where I use headphones to drown out the fiance. Side note -- women really hate it when you completely ignore them even if they are talking to you through your headphones. I guess that attitude explains why you are gay. Or are you a woman?
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May 16, 2014 19:58
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gently caress them posted:And of course you should be wearing arch supports. INSOLES. If you're a programmer you can afford to go grab some right now, so do so TOMORROW. Step on the fancy machine thing that tells you what kind to get and do it, you won't regret it. Why the gently caress do you need arch support in a chair?
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May 16, 2014 20:00
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the posted:Is this a "post your work environment" thread? Hi I am your opposite:  We had an extra monitor and no one else wanted it. Also, it's an open office in an old church, so it's super echoy and terrible. 
Eleeleth fucked around with this message at 20:09 on May 16, 2014 |
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May 16, 2014 20:07
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shrughes posted:I guess that attitude explains why you are gay. Or are you a woman? Neither. Not sure what gave off that impression . . .
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May 16, 2014 20:36
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wwb posted:Neither. Not sure what gave off that impression . . . Okay, then you're... intersex? I don't know, it just seemed the probability was highest that you were a woman-hating gay rather than a self-hating woman, though I didn't consider alternatives. (It's generally speaking not unreasonable to pick the highest-probability outcomes and ignore the negligants. It's simple Bayesian reasoning. See LessWrong to self-educate in this matter.) Does your fiancé also have the same attitude towards women talking to him? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 16, 2014 20:43
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wwb posted:Neither. Not sure what gave off that impression . . . Put Shrughes On Ignore
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May 16, 2014 20:44
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Also, you're a bad sexist pig, too.
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May 16, 2014 20:46
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shrughes posted:Okay, then you're... intersex? I don't know, it just seemed the probability was highest that you were a woman-hating gay rather than a self-hating woman, though I didn't consider alternatives. (It's generally speaking not unreasonable to pick the highest-probability outcomes and ignore the negligants. It's simple Bayesian reasoning. See LessWrong to self-educate in this matter.) No. More like a busy hetrosexual male who doesn't like being distracted by stupid fiance sort of questions when he is neck deep in debugging things. Also, go gently caress yourself.
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May 16, 2014 21:49
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wwb posted:No. More like a busy hetrosexual male who doesn't like being distracted by stupid fiance sort of questions when he is neck deep in debugging things. I still don't get it, though. Why do you blame women when a man is the one asking the questions?
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May 16, 2014 22:04
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wwb posted:I've got a private office but I still have too much going on to get any real development work done there. Most things happen at home where I use headphones to drown out the fiance. Side note -- women really hate it when you completely ignore them even if they are talking to you through your headphones. Ah good to see a fellow redpiller in cobol. I thought I was alone in my hatred of women in the workplace. Sometimes you just gotta neg em enough so they get the point. *tips hat* (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 16, 2014 22:13
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shrughes posted:I still don't get it, though. Why do you blame women when a man is the one asking the questions? Haha look at this sperglord. You see fellow posters, he is trying to "educate" us on the correct word to use for 'person you are engaged to' depending on which gender that person is. You see, you use "fiance" to indicate that the person you are engaged to is male and "fiancée" to indicate that this person is female. Now because our friend here is a loving autist and incapable of deriving a meaning from context and also likes being a massive frothing pedantic oval office, he keeps admonishing and insulting the original poster in a very passive-aggressive and round-about way about their usage of a word that they perhaps spelled incorrectly or (quite rightly) didn't give a poo poo about in the first place.
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May 16, 2014 23:03
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Everyone stop, and shrughes that's completely irrelevant and for the most part trivial to bring up and make a big deal about. If you want to continue arguing please do it somewhere else.
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May 16, 2014 23:22
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Hey isn't this thread supposed to be about bashing open floor plan offices, stupid/cheap managers who put us engineering-type workers in them, and the loud distracting assholes who we have to sit next to? My previous job had only open office space (not even cubicles) for everyone lower on the food chain than VP. VPs and up got offices with doors, personal printers, and probably company-paid oral sex every day but I'm only speculating about that because I can't see through closed doors. Anyway, my assigned desk was in the same room as a dozen sales guys who blab loudly and incessantly on their phones with a TV blaring all day, so to get any work done I had to put on a sweatshirt and headphones and go sit under an AC vent in the server room with a lovely laptop. I asked my boss, the CTO, if I could move into a tiny office they kept open for visiting executives and was told that I wasn't important enough. I quit that job and it felt like getting out of prison. gently caress open offices and the idiotic cheap bastards who think they're a good idea.
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May 16, 2014 23:28
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Lunixnerd posted:Now because our friend here is a loving autist and incapable of deriving a meaning from context and also likes being a massive frothing pedantic oval office, he keeps admonishing and insulting the original poster in a very passive-aggressive and round-about way about their usage of a word that they perhaps spelled incorrectly or (quite rightly) didn't give a poo poo about in the first place. And here I thought I was admonishing him for his sexist attitudes in the workplace.
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May 16, 2014 23:36
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Lunixnerd posted:Haha look at this sperglord. You see fellow posters, he is trying to "educate" us on the correct word to use for 'person you are engaged to' depending on which gender that person is. You see, you use "fiance" to indicate that the person you are engaged to is male and "fiancée" to indicate that this person is female. I think he was just making a (bad) joke about a really sexist thing a poster said. Not sure how that equates to someone being autistic. As for my work environment, I thankfully don't have to work in an open office plan and have my own office. Downside is I don't have a window and its pretty small so it gets kinda depressing. I really wish I had a window
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May 16, 2014 23:43
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Do not send threads on pointless lovely derails because you think someone is an rear end in a top hat. It is possible to call someone out in an otherwise useful and on-topic post! See etcetera08's post for an example. Thread is now back on track
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May 17, 2014 00:31
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There is a ping pong table directly behind me in the fairly small room I share with 4 other people that gets about 5 games a day!
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May 17, 2014 02:04
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Open plan is pretty much the norm in the UK, I've worked for a fair few large tech companies and private offices seem like a rare thing for everything except for upper management. Even when we have partitions they are usually low enough to see and talk to each other over. I don't think we put our devs on pedestals so much as it seems like you do in the states (although I kind of wish we did). There was one guy I used to work with at T Mobile who I would frequently see lying on his front under his desk like a kid.
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May 17, 2014 14:45
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I work in a very dense open plan, and it sucks, constant distraction. Also very brightly lit with flourescent, which I hate also. Of course any office is going to have big flourescent tubes, but at my last job it was left very dim, and I brought in my own halogen lamp for my cube which was a huge improvement. My office now has all glass walls in skyscraper so it has tons of light, I wish they would just turn off the lights during the day. ^^ I don't think I've ever seen a pic of a UK office that wasn't open plan, it seems to be super trendy and the way to look modern and smart.
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May 17, 2014 17:15
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I've been at my current company for just under 2 years, and 3 buildings. 1) Above a bar, which had a bowling lane. The roof leaked every time it rained, and the floor plan was about 4 large wood-floored open areas, each with between 8 and 20 people. Horrible. 2) Nice building, good view, 2 giant work areas with about 50 people each. At least I managed to get my back to a wall in this one. 3) The current office we just moved into. Extremely densely packed open plan, no privacy, no windows. Pingpong and foosball tables nearby in the kitchen area. It's like they're trying to keep us from actually getting anything done.
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May 21, 2014 05:15
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Quite literally, my humble office. Eventually we will put a second developer in here, but until then it's mine.  Only difference from this point is I've got a bigger L-Desk instead (which was needed). The actual environment besides just where I work is pretty cool. It's quiet enough to hear a coin drop at pretty much all times, and everyone is likable. We're still a very small op with only 3 people (developer boss, customer support/web designer, myself). I'm hoping we eventually have beer fridays or something. I worked at a place with an open floor plan before this, and it was really terrible as well (secretary having meetings right behind me while coding, no headphones or music rule). Ideally I think I'd like one or two more developers in the same office with me so it's not quite as isolating.
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May 23, 2014 20:58
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I work for Google, who often claim to have invented the open floor plan, and honestly I don't hate it as much as I'm told I should. On the other hand, we're Google (wiping-tears-with-money.gif), so we actually put in the money and facilities effort to make sure that things don't get unreasonable. Sound-absorbing ceilings and floors and the like. I know that most companies look at it and say "yes, let's take this and slash all the expensive parts of it wait why does everyone hate this". Other than that, I've got two 23" monitors, one vertical for code and one horizontal for docs. Apple Chiclet keyboard and a BEAST of a machine.
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May 24, 2014 03:57
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They recently moved us out of the nice, quiet office into a much denser area where I sit right next to the call center folks. The new office also has a central sound system and some genius put an apple tv on it so anyone can play music for the entire office. The new place sucks and I hate it, I want my old desk back where the programmers were sequestered from everyone else and it was nice and quiet and there wasn't dad rock playing all the time. I'm gonna lose my hearing at this rate, drowning it out with other stuff.
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May 24, 2014 15:24
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SolTerrasa posted:I work for Google, who often claim to have invented the open floor plan, and honestly I don't hate it as much as I'm told I should. On the other hand, we're Google (wiping-tears-with-money.gif), so we actually put in the money and facilities effort to make sure that things don't get unreasonable. Sound-absorbing ceilings and floors and the like. I know that most companies look at it and say "yes, let's take this and slash all the expensive parts of it wait why does everyone hate this". Other than that, I've got two 23" monitors, one vertical for code and one horizontal for docs. Apple Chiclet keyboard and a BEAST of a machine. Yeah, basically people see this and then end up cargo-culting it. At the job I had before my current one, our two development teams were originally spread out across three rooms of cubes. People were generally quiet, and people gravitated toward sitting with those who they worked with often so you could just turn your chair to talk quietly. They then "remodeled" some old unused space, which basically amounted to cleaning and waxing the linoleum floor (strike 1), and installing a bunch of 4-seat desks. It was clear they were doing this on the cheap and I expected them to install crappy carpet squares, but they went really cheap and had no carpet at all. They put both teams in here, with 32 seats in this room. The idea was to get the teams all in one place so they could "collaborate." The problem though was that they did not seat people together who worked together (strike 2). Instead they assigned seats based on seniority and people picked based on preferences like "back to the wall so people can't see me slacking" or "back not facing the door so people can't see me slacking." So the teams were all mixed about and people would shout across the room. Or they'd stand up and go hover behind a teammate without regard to the people on either side who probably had no stake in the conversation. We had no impromptu un-schedulable meeting space (strike 3) to go take a conversation if it needed to be something in-depth that might bother other people. Hell, we had a huge shortage of meeting rooms of any sort; at one point they put the breakrooms on the calendar as meeting rooms and blocked out 11am-1pm so people could eat.
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May 24, 2014 23:09
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