Offices vs. Cubes For Developers? 87
k12boy asks: "The company I work for has just announced that we're going to move our corporate headquarters (locally, but to a new building) and our facilities folks are currently searching for the new space. My intuition tells me that the developers on my team would be a lot more productive if I could give them offices (even shared) instead of the cube space they currently have, but I don't have any data to back it up. Does anyone have a pointer to any studies that prove me right or wrong?" Studies aside, can anyone think of a time that programmers actuallly did work more happily or productively in cubicles? Might there be advantages to more open workspaces compared to closed office doors?
cube farms!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:cube farms!! (Score:5, Interesting)
- kept marketing/sales/management out (mostly)
- allowed small developer groups to interact
- center space was good for ad hoc design sessions/updates/meetings/etc.
- built a good sense of team instead of a feeling of isolated drones
People wore headphones to do music and we avoided giving everyone their own phone, instead having shared phones. It was pretty productive.Re:cube farms!! (Score:1)
Re:cube farms are EVIL!!! (Score:2)
Just my experience and not so HO.
Cubes aren't open. (Score:2, Insightful)
Either have offices (quiet and private) or a true open plan office (no partitions)
Cubes are the worst of both with no benefits.
Re:Cubes aren't open. (Score:2)
Our original workspace was separate offices. It was the worst. Poor communication, poor productivity; lost time to having to re-intergrate development tangents, etc. The people thought it was good, but we weren't operating as a team so much.
I moved my development team into a "lab" -- one big room with desks, but no cube walls. It seemed to work pretty well -- good communication and teamwork. Then the company moved as we got another "lab", but with cubes. It was not as good, but still good, because it was open and we were close together. On one front it was better: the padded walls absorbed sound a lot better than the hard surfaces in the previous "lab."
Illusions (Score:2)
happy = good (Score:1)
to get better workers for less money if
they think your company is a fun/cool place
to work.
Depends on the type of cube environment (Score:2)
Single Office >= Quiet Cubicle >= Noisy Cubicle >= Shared Office
Shared vs Not (Score:2, Informative)
Cubes are evil, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, it took my five minutes to write this because I had to keep alt-tabbing over to my "real work". Sigh.
Re:Cubes are evil, but... (Score:2)
Re:Cubes are evil, but... (Score:2)
I'd take the privacy--a door that shuts, a phone that can be unplugged, a stereo that goes up to eleven... everybody's different, though.
Re:Cubes are evil, but... (Score:1)
Ha! Sadly, this is not always the case. I was once on a project where everyone was seated in cubes with their backs to each other. This made it painfully obvious when one member (lets call this person Robin) was surfing the web constantly and doing very little work. As time passed, Robin became more efficient by spending more than six hours a day on the phone with Robin's significant other WHILE surfing the web.
While it may be argued that this was more of a management problem than a cube vs office problem (since management was aware, but did little to solve the problem), it still was severely demoralizing to team members seated closest to Robin.
It should be noted that after a few members complained and management had a word with Robin, Robin quickly became the fastest alt-tabber in the west. It should also be noted that by the time Robin noticed anyone walking over to Robin's desk, they saw what was on the screen, so alt-tabbing only made it painfully more obvious that Robin wasn't working. (this has the unfortunate side effect that those of us who use several workspaces and switch between them often also appear to be slacking)
Ive worked in both (Score:2)
The trouble with cubes is the complete inability to tune-in/tune-out to the general area chatter. Sometimes you want to hear if a technical debate is starting up among your co-developers so you can decide if you want to contribute your two cents worth. Sometimes you want to concentrate on a particularly tricky design and want complete quiet. An office provides the opportunity to close the door.
Generally, most of us leave our office doors open. If I need to make a short personal phone call, I'll close mine. Working in a cube farm requires finding a small "meeting room" from which to make the phone call. I suppose this cuts down on excessive personal calls, but I doubt most people abuse their phone privileges. The really nice thing, is that when you want to have what is likely to become a lively debate, you don't have to get together and find an available "meeting room" -- you pick the office of someone hosting the debate, and close the door.
Now, you'd think this contradicts the desire to be able to "tune in" to the pulse of the work group. But, I've found that such conversations tend to start through open doorways or in the hall, and migrate to an office if necessary.
Peopleware is for you (Score:1, Informative)
Peopleware [amazon.com]
all in all its just another brick in the wall (Score:5, Insightful)
Peopleware (by DeMarco and Lister -http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.a
More topically, Extreme Programming actually has quite a lot to say on office layout. You can see one example here: http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/c3space.htm
I have to agree to some extent with the naysayers though. Interruptions to flow can be a disaster in shared spaces if there is no check on interactions. If you can get people to shut up for a few hours a day though sharing an office space is fairly productive.
-Baz
Re:all in all its just another brick in the wall (Score:4, Interesting)
If you can get people to shut up for a few hours a day though sharing an office space is fairly productive
Reminds me of when I worked in an 8 person cubicle office.
I found that coming to work at 5 am allowed me some quality private time to get work done, thinking done, and especially writing. Then, in the early afternoon I'd knock off for some physical activity because my brain was too buzzed.
I dunno about you, but I find that, even more than coding or debugging, writing coherent prose requires a great deal of uninterrupted concentration. Chatter from cubemates is too distracting for such work.
I won't even venture to say how difficult it is to perform any kind of personnel management task if your office is on public display, as it is for a friend of mine. Talk about fishbowls!
I think clustered offices with doors that can be closed or open is a bonus.
Windows rate high in my book, too, probably because I've been depressed at times in offices that didn't have one.
Re:all in all its just another brick in the wall (Score:1)
Probably the first time those words have been uttered on Slashdot.
Re:all in all its just another brick in the wall (Score:1)
I work in one of these! (Score:2, Interesting)
I work in one of these "shared team areas", and I think they are great. Mine has a window and four of us work in one partitioned space in an open plan office. I really like it.
The area is big enough that each of us have rightangle desks with enough space to house probably 6 desktop boxes with 17 inch monitors (I have 3 and a laptop). We all sit with our backs to the center so there is no over looking yet you can easily just spin round on your chair to chat to someone. There are a couple of extra chairs so when people come round to discuss something they can have a seat.
The partions are high enough that you cannot see over them to the other areas when sitting in a chair, this is a good thing, you feel separated but still accessible to just stand up and grab the attention of someone in the next area along. The only problem is people with loud voices and speaker phones, but in general people don't use them too often.
One of the things I really like is the fact that there are offices that you can use if you need a private chat, they are small and can be used by anyone. Each one has enough room for maybe 4 people at a push sitting around a small table, they also have power and network sockets for your laptop, and a speaker phone. I think this is what saves the whole concept, if you need some privacy for whatever reason, or a conference call then you can have one without disturbing everyone. That coupled with nice coffee bars that you can escape to with sofa's can comfy chairs, and grounds you can go for a walk in means you don't feel trapped in some cube nightmare.
Managers have offices, but then you might go to them to discuss your personal problems / problems with co-workers so I think it is fair enough. Difficult to have those sort of discussions in open plan ;)
I have worked in shared offices, and even had my own office, but to be honest I prefer my current open plan arrangement it suites my work very well, it's easy to chat with my friends, I have space around me rather than being shoved in a tiny office and I don't have to put up with the person I shared the office with's music taste ;)
RE:Open Plan (Score:3, Informative)
I work in an open arrangement. The benefit is I can shout to whomever I want to ask a question. And I might get an answer but from someone else. We had great moral for a while and were very productive. Two things spoiled it. First we moved to a room that just did not have the same layout ie. no more Razor track or dart throwing corridor. Also the room has a lot more traffic since a lot of people use it as a short cut.
Second is as moral was great and caused people to feel better and hence moral got even better the flip side is true as well. So as the group's moral slide it caused at rapid decline. This led to less productivity and people putting in less to no overtime.
From my experience from being a programmer, architect, manager, etc. is moral. I don't really think people care were they work as much as they feel like they are helping to build something and get rewarded rather than enriching a select few aka Enron.
Case in point. I worked as a programmer for a company that moved HQ from the first factory to a small 3-story building. Sure the building was nice, quiet, etc. However in the move the executives were now on their own floor. They were more isolated. The company went from outrageous growth 4-digit to double-digit growth. Why because the employees that did the day-to-day work felt that now they weren't part of the company but enriching a few executives (this was made worse because few people were promoted from within). You use to walk down the hall and poke your head into the CEO's office. Now it required card key and an appointment or getting lucky enough to run into him. Moral plummeted and so did the revenue growth.
Take care of your employees and they will take care of you.
Not anonymous just not stupid when being negative about my employer
Re:Open Plan (Score:1)
Re:Open Plan (Score:1)
Moral: Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character: moral scrutiny; a moral quandary.
Morale: The state of the spirits of a person or group as exhibited by confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and willingness to perform assigned tasks.
Don't mean to nit pick, but I had a hard time reading your message, as I had to keep mentally switching between the two.
Re:Open Plan (Score:2)
I work in an open arrangement. The benefit is I can shout to whomever I want to ask a question. And I might get an answer but from someone else.
So you *liked* working in an environment where one person would interrupt and destroty the concentration of the whole group to ask a question? And you think that's productive?
However in the move the executives were now on their own floor. They were more isolated.
Having individual (or paired) offices for people doesn't mean that you can't have everyone accessible. The point of having offices is that a few people can have a conversation without disturbing everyone in the area.
And no company can sustain "4-digit growth". It's simply not possible.
Re:Open Plan (Score:2)
It sounds counterintuitive, but it can work very well. Studies of pair programming, for example, show substantial gains in quality.
Personally, I love open office arrangements, except when I hate them utterly. What's the difference? For me, it's whether everybody in the room is involved in the same project.
If the people around me are all working on the same thing, then their conversations aren't a distraction any more than my teammates in a basketball game. The number of times an overheard comment has saved me hours of work are beyond counting. Errors, like weeds, grow quickly once they take root; best to kill them as early as possible.
On the other hand, if people around me are talking about things irrelevant to the work I'm doing, it's like having random people wandering through the basketball court. It makes me crazy, and I have to put on headphones to get anything done.
My recommendatation: project rooms (aka war rooms). But managers should be aware that this isn't the cheap way out; to reap the high-communication benefits of open offices, you must provide meeting rooms and private places for making personal calls, checking email, and any activities not related to the project!
Re:Open Plan (Score:1)
I think the company lost a whole lot when we couldn't share office anymore, and I think that organizing people after department isn't the best thing you can do. My personal belief is that it's better to mix people from different departments around products or projects, because you ease communication between people who really need to communicate, like marketing and r&d.
As for privacy, all you really need is some secluded areas where people can have private phonecalls etctera and of course a open-minded policy that trusts employees to do what they're supposed to and not care too much about when people takes breaks.
In our office you could see people sitting reading magazines, drinking coffee going off to the healthclub anytime they wanted to. In the end they were happy and pulled their weight, with good margins too.
That's just my 2 cents.
Cubes are the worst of both worlds. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're doing a lot of group work, a truly open office space would probably be great, but for coding, writing white papers, etc., you need to be able to concentrate imho.
*Definately* offices. (Score:3, Informative)
Read: This article [joelonsoftware.com]
Basically programmers need concentration to work, and being in a cubicle all day mean that they are constantly being interuppted.
Not good!
Re:*Definately* offices. (Score:2)
Constant interuptions are a major evil.
Developers need to huddle once in a while, but that should happen in a neutral space.
Here's a web site that might help (Score:3, Informative)
My personal opinion is that as long as the walls are high and thick enough to block some of the other person's nasty choice of music and hang up cabinets, then cubicles seem to be ok.
Mix and Match (Score:4, Insightful)
When a group of people are working on the same (or similar) projects then having them in an open environment tends to make them more productive. Communication between people is easier, quick meetings to hammer out problems are easily held and are usually very productive (usually because you are coding during the meeting and once the meeting is over the code is fixed).
When people are just thrown into a cubicle farm where the person next to you may or may not be working on anything even close to what you are working on then productivity goes down. Too much noise is created by "irrelevant" (to your project that is) conversations. People shuffle around and the office and stop to chit-chat. Meetings with team members have to be scheduled and have to be held away from the working area so the "bounce" effect is magnified. In general it is the most distracting unproductive environment I have ever been in.
If your company is going to use a cubicle farm approach push for cubicle assignments that reflect work assignemnts and enforce the philosophy that a change in projects dictates a change in cubicles. This also gives a benefit to management in that they know that the Accounting programmers always sit on the NE corner, the HR programmers always sit on the NW corner, etc.
If it is possible to get offices, get large offices that can COMFORTABLY seat 3-4 programmers in a room (don't cram 4 programmers into an 8x12 office).
If you are a lone programmer working on a project, I would recommend isolation. I am currently the only programmer in my department and my productivity has noticably increased since I moved from my "veal fattening pen" to my office. I don't have to listen to co-workers family problems, I don't lose time with social graces "Hi, how are you today
Ask them (Score:1)
a) getting your own cubicle
b) sharing a cubical
c) getting you own office
d) getting a shared office
most likely nobody will like the decesion.
If instead you gather everyone together and say,
"Hey, since we are moving we have a choice of how we arange the office. What would you like?"
Letting the developers/sysadmin/etc people have more control over their environment will generate a better atmosphere overall. Which leads to better productivity. I forgot where this came from, but it isn't my original idea.
If they want a 'bull pit', then give 'em a bull pit. If they want individual cubicals, then give 'em that. Maybe a combination, some one way, others the other.
Re:Ask them (Score:1)
wow, I totally disagree.
The problem is that no matter what you choose, someone will have a problem with it, even if you mix it up. You will never reach concensus, and going full democracy on an issue like this will kill ALL productivity (a) until the decision is actually made AND (b) after everyone moves in. This is because everyone will stop what they're doing and focus on the cube debate.
I, like others, recommend the book Peopleware. I've worked in all kinds of environments and have found myself most productive (long term) in quiet places. I may go through periods of regression, but overall I am able to concentrate better.
The open floorplan is a joke because true concentration is simply not possible. Someone is always interrupting, often because they think they found a funny mp3 they just HAVE to share with the "team." Without concentration, people may be more BUSY, but they certainly won't be more productive.
But back to the democratic voting idea: don't go there. Definitely solicit input from everyone, but make your own decision and then tell people what they're getting. They will get used to it, and they will feel happy grumbling about what a poor choice you made, but at least they won't be spending all their work time debating and politicking for their own personal choice.
2-3 person offices (Score:2)
You still get a more private environment, you have a door you can close, if you all agree in tastes, you can play music without headphones. But you're not isolated... you can still easily ask questions or pair program or have another pair of eyes debug with you. In a pinch, you can squeeze in a small team for team meetings when all the conference rooms are filled.
It may not be as ego boosting as having single offices, but in my experience, it's a far better arrangement. Especially when you can drop a whole team into a couple of adjacent offices... you make it easy to find people, and you get some team building for free (as long as you can live with your officemates).
Dumb Question. (Score:1)
Re:Dumb Question. (Score:1)
I'm happy with it because my deskspace wraps around my entire area giving me tons of room to spread-out and keep organized. I'm also able to ask my co-worker questions (mostly vice versa) if I need to, without having to get up or pick up the phone. And, since there is someone nearby, it sort of keeps me from dozing off or just surfing the web all day.
The best part, of course, is that we have a large picture window looking out into the woods. I cannot express how important it is to have access to a window with sunlight. My previous office was a "real" office all to myself with a door and everything. However, it had no windows. No amount of artificial lighting could make up for how depressed I was working in that dark little hole.
I don't think it's a coincidence that my productivity (and more importantly, billing$) doubled when I moved to my current, open office.
Re:Dumb Question. (Score:2)
That said, of the 14 offices we have here, 8 are held by people lower in seniority than me. On more than one occasion we've had multiple relocations and I was promised one, then denied. With my current cube, it's not so bad, but the one I got before this one made me angry.
Oh well!
GTRacer
- If it weren't for other people, I might actually enjoy work!
make the most of what space you get (Score:4, Interesting)
The main reason individual offices are avoided? Expense. You'll likely get that as an argument for a cube farm, regardless of what studies you can quote about productivity. I encourage you to stick to your guns, though -- point out short term cost gains vs. long term productivity of other arrangements. Office walls and cube farms both cost money up front.
If you do end up with a cube farm anyways, make the most of it. Give neighbors the right to have music turned down, and encourage or even require use of headphones. Some nice noise-cancelling headphones are even better.
When I worked in a cube farm, several of us made signs:
Do Not Disturb
if you really need to reach me:
- try back later
- send me email
- leave a message
The signs were on strings and hung across the cubical entrance to physically block the way.It took a while (it would have gone quicker if I could have given a shock to people who ignored it :-), but eventually people learned to respect the signs. Even the execs.
Depends on the workers and the job, of course (Score:2)
When I worked in a cube farm, I found myself working very odd hours. One of the main reasons I needed to do that was because I have a very bad habit:
I talk to myself.
Especially when debugging code.
This wasn't a problem in the minicomputer days, when each lab held four rather loud machines and there was enough space so my mutterings at machine 3 weren't audible at any of the other machines. When my desk became the lab, and the noise level was much, much lower, I used to get complaints about my dialog with myself. (I used to be ribbed about it, too. No, I won't elaborate.)
Now, what I have found is the floor-to-ceiling cubes are very nice for people like me -- cheaper than a "hard" office, and it contains the noise quite well. With the proper layout of openings, you don't even have to have doors.
I'll be interested to hear if the bean-counters don't squash you flat...
Data is available (Score:2, Interesting)
One theory is that the part of the brain that's mostly involved in creativity and general insight is easily interrupted by outside noises, including music. They found the same results among people who like to work with music and those who don't.
They further point out research that shows that good programmers tend to have bigger offices. It's not clear whether the better programmers get jobs at better companies, or whether bigger offices tend to make programmers better. But as Fred Brooks said about this study, ``Who cares what the reason is!?'' Big Offices are obviously a good thing.
We went from offices to cubes (Score:3, Interesting)
As you can guess no one was (or is) happy about it, this topic is the source of endless debate and complaints to this day. Now, we have really nice cube, with pseudo "doors", but it doesn't help.
The higher ups called the new layout more "collaborative". We collaborated fine before, now try to squeeze two people into a cube to try to work together. The conversation carries across half the office, disturbing everyone else. The only advantage is I yell across the room to others without getting up where before I had to actually go into the hall (gee, what a plus).
Here is a short list of other complaints (besides noise):
Lighting: I 'm really sensitive to glare from florescent lights, trying to unhook the ones above me isn't an option since others around me prefer to no sit in the dark.
Temperature: Our old offices had adjustable air vents. They really didn't work great, but what little they did was helpful to those who are cold/hot all the time.
Privacy: I know the intimate details of all those how sit around me from their personal phone calls. I've gotten good at talking in code to my wife about personal issues, that's a plus.
Walls: Hard to hang Pictures, whiteboards, posters, calendars, on cube walls.
Have and Have-nots: Some people have offices, some have cubes.
Both are good... (Score:1)
People should be able to interact conveniently, but still have enough privacy that they don't have to whisper on the telephone.
Shared offices don't work when someone chooses to eat lunch at an odd time crinkling and smacking for what seems like an eternity.
Cubicles don't work when they are so small you have to back out into the walkway to stand up.
Single offices don't work when the person has no discipline and just surfs the web all day.
Basically any option can work depending on the cross-section of people in your office. If everyone is a loud lazy jerk, then I wish you luck.
Cubes can work IF (Score:3)
1.) The cubes are sonically isolated from people who use the phone for actual work (like sales people).
2.) The cube inhabitants listen to music on headphones, unless they can get a general agreement that their chosen volume level is low enough to make the music perfectly inaudible (music that you hear at the edge of your perception can be more distracting that blaringly loud music).
3.) People show each other respect when interrupting each other. The proper way to interrupt someone in a cube is to stand silently in the entrance until they choose to break away from their work and acknowledge your presence. If they actually don't see you in the doorway, you can quietly say, "knock, knock," and wait for a response. This way the person can continue their train of thought for a few minutes, and then , if necessary, they can say, "I'll come see you when I'm not busy."
4.) People are generally quiet - cubes just don't work with overly talkative people, but people who are generally quiet tend to find a decent level of grouping together between cubes and shooting the shit (which can be really good for your development team, in the appropriate quantity).
I have found that cubes can really work with a tight development team (where everyone is not off working on totally isolated projects). I have also watched people who didn't understand the concepts of concentration and personal space really piss each other off...
Use the stigma to bargain (Score:2)
Companies often know that it is in their best interests to keep you happy, so they are often happy to salve your wounds with meaningless treasures. It makes you feel like you have some power (whether or not you had any real choice in the matter) and it makes you feel like you got something in return for what you lost (from the companies perspective, at least - maybe you like cubes, but don't tell them that).
When we got moved into cubes (even though we had no choice), we said, "you can only put us in cubes if you get us incandescent lighting and let us ban all fluorescence from the cube area."
So they got us all halogen desk lamps and floor lamps which we could point at the walls and ceiling.
It was wonderful. There was no direct light; it was all reflected off of some diffusing surface. The cubes were placid and quiet because of the subtlety. When people in other departments were stressed, they would sometimes lie down on our couch because it was so peacefull where we were.
Anyway, my point is, if you can make the company think that you don't want it, you can sometimes get something in exchange. Like, "you can take my office away and put me in a cube if you buy me this expensive ergonomic chair which I have been drooling over."
quasi-cubes (Score:2)
this made it easy to wheel over and converse with a co-worker or go to another office and work with people there. talk to your neighbor by pushing your chair backwards a few feet. social atmosphere is everything!
Cubes & Offices (Score:1)
I work in a 'pen' of 4 corner desks. Between each desk, there is either a cupboard, a workstation trolley, or the way into the pen. We have a reasonably large desk area, and plenty of space to pace around in the pen. Between pens, there is a chest-high partition. When I'm sitting, I can't see over it. If I stand up, I can see the people in the next pen.
Noise is only rarely a problem. The worst is that the pen next to mine is the secretaries', and occasionally they get going on a serious bitching session (this is not a general slur on secretaries - it just happens to be the case where I work). Mostly it's quiet and easy to concentrate. It's sociable, and we have quite a humourous atmosphere. It's nice being able to talk to someone else in the pen or just over the partition without getting up.
Temperature can be a problem, but that is mostly due to the inadequacies of our system not responding quickly enough to changes.
Finally, I'm amazed to hear that some people are used to listening to music while they work. I've never heard of anyone doing that here, at least during office hours. Music always kills my concentration stone-dead. Maybe that's because I'm a musician and I always end up analysing it instead of working. Actually, I'm very intolerant of noise. I get exhausted if I have to work in a machine room for long.
Re:Cubes & Offices (Score:1)
Same here, open plan seems to be the standard in larger companies, small offices elsewhere. I'm in an open plan office, and as a result I get to hear everyone booking their holidays and discussing that nasty little rash with their friends.
We are about to start experimenting with hotdesking and the like. That will be a nightmare - every time we have an office move, we spend days negotiating preferences (near window, no light, near heat etc.).
Give 'em both...it's worth the money!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more, I am far from being alone in my decision to interact with my fellow geeks. Of the regulars whom I associate with in our development lab (which, BTW is a moderately sized, locked door office w/o windows), there are five of us - all architecture-level software developers within our corporation - whom maintain coexistence between the lab and our 'official' offices.
So, why you may wonder, would anyone in their right mind (especially a geek) not only resist the temptation of being solitary, but actually seek out the company of others??? Simple, to me it is all about shared learning! Everyone (ok, most everyone...) has an expertise or a forte of some sort within his or her field of interest. In a public environment such as the one I share we all benefit from our collective knowledge, experience and style in a manner in which increases our overall performance, quality and output!!! Management loves it because we pump out more code; we love it because we continually challenge and learn from one another!!!
Admittedly, I do not have any type of study or graphs (a.k.a. manager worthy content) to support my conclusions, however I do have considerable, personal real-world experience that confirms these ideas...
A Personal Heresy (Score:4, Insightful)
As we speak, I'm in the process of packing up and moving from an office to a cube. It's a really nice office too -- windows, great view, lots of room, thick walls. The cube is a cramped, dark, inconvenient little thing. I'm gonna really miss the absence of background noise, the ravens that hang out outside my window, the ability to close the door and crank up Glenn Gould, yada yada.
That being said, I think this move is a good thing. To understand my logic, you need some backstory.
A couple of boom-bust cycles ago, my company was founded by A Leading Software Visionary. After a few initial successes, ALSV found he had more cash than he knew what to do with. So he decided he was going to build Software Development Nirvana. SDN would be a towering, innovative building with lots of unusual features. The chief among these would be the layout. There would be three floors. The first two would be your standard mixture of offices (only a few with windows) and cube farms. But the third floor, that was special.
Most of the third floor was set aside for the R&D folk. All of these people would have large window offices. (To create so many window offices, ALSV came up with this convoluted, space-inefficent design.) These were the creative people, right? They needed to be pampered, so they could go off and Create Value.
Didn't work out, of course. ALSV was fired soon after the SDN was finished. Partly because SDN cost way too much to build and maintain, but mainly because the developers never Created as much Value as was hoped. The big problem was a severe lack of teamwork. People just went off and did what they thought was important. That meant a lot of Cool Features. But it also meant messy codebases, and changes that were introduced without thought to their effect on the rest of the product, never mind QA, Integration, or Documentation impact. And of course, a lot of things important things just fell through the cracks, because nobody was interested in working on them.
The fancy offices were only part of the problem, of course. Indeed, they might not have been a problem at all if management had been at all competent. I've worked at other companies with private offices (not as nice as these, but as private, or nearly so) that didn't have these problems. Mainly because management knew how manage.
Thing is, we no longer have bad management. A lot of my coworkers would disagree. They're totally disgruntled at novel concepts, like planning their work in advance, or ignoring their personal priorities in favor of shared project goals. But an objective outsider would have to agree that current management is doing what needs to be done.
Except that management can't seem to break the Rugged Individualist model of development that still haunts us. We have meetings where people are told, "this is how we need to do things now." Sometimes they object, but most often they say nothing, and go back to their offices, close the doors, and do things the way they've always done them.
My department is no exception. (We're not an R&D team, and before I was hired, the department had cubes downstairs. But as the company shrank, there were lots of extra offices, and so other departemts found excuses to move upstairs.) We're not badly run. In fact the current manager is the best I've ever worked with. (God, I hope she doesn't read this.) But there's no cohesion. Everybody has their own idea of how things should be done, and total contempt for any alternatives.
Some weeks back, we had a department meeting where we were supposed to discuss and plan changes to procedures and technology. A major issue -- past neglect has left things get hopelessly out of date. It was a fiasco -- al evel of social interaction that wouldn't be tolerated in a kindergarten. I went on a bathroom break and never returned, because the alternative was a severe loss of temper. Afterwards I told my boss, "I've always hated cubes. But maybe a little less privacy is the only way to make these people see they're part of a team."
Well, I got my wish. Not because of what I said. But the company's growing again, and half the building's now rented out. So back downstairs we go. Should be interesting.
Open Area - Cube - Shared Office - My Office (Score:1)
Maybe it was the cubes we had (ugly blue fuzzy fabric, over 6 feet tall) but everyone became depressed. It was a lot harder to talk to each other and we all felt kind of seperated. I don't think work really suffered but nobody liked them.
Near the end of that company (it was a dotcom), 3 of the other people in the cubes were let go and with only 2 people and 5 desks we took down the cubes and had an open area again. I personally liked having 2-3 desks I could work at (one for my development, one for mac development, then a multimedia machine i could queue to run something and sit back and let it do its thing)...
When that company died I started work at a new company sharing a small office. I was really a guest, seeing that it was the company's owner's office and a private office was being built for me upstairs. Although annoying at times (people would come in to shred papers, ask questions, lots of phone calls) it was very productive and I was somewhat happy. I was looking forward to my own personal office though...
I moved into my office over a month ago. The privacy is great and I can turn off the lights (like all programmers want to do) without bothering anyone. The strange thing is, I feel sort of seperated and de-motivated to work. I notice myself spending a lot more time surfing slashdot when I know there's no way anyone will see me not actively working. :p
My suggestion would be to have small offices big enough for 2 people and to pair you developers up in them. Face them opposite of each other so they can't look at the other person's screen for privacy reasons.
Some level of partitions are needed. (Score:1)
- Noise from other works: russling about / conversations & phone calls
- Visual changes: things moving about from others
- Personal space: people like a level of isolation when they work.
- Personal hygiene: THIS I MUST EMPHASIZED. I've had a few workers, both visa and local workers, who at times may have a smell about themselves. Had one person who had such a smell that it would make me twitch.
I would recommend a shared office/space because it allows for better and faster communication, but definitely use some level of partitions, so that it is a combination of a cube and a shared envirnoment. Air fresheners are highly recommended, in this setup as well.
Cube vs Office (Score:1)
Having headphones certainly helped to reduce any distractions from other conversations happening in the room, yet you could still catch someones attention easily enough if you needed to. Had we been out in the main area (not really cubicles - more open-plannish) there would have been more distractions and we would have been scattered throughout the building.
This worked well for our small-ish project, and when we had got through the bulk of the work, we were able to go back to our regular desks. If anyone wanted to use a private office, there were a couple of small meeting rooms (that could fit 4 people around a table) which were generally available.
Most studies of information flow seem to suggest that open-plan environments facilitate the free flow of information - it is easy to ask anyone a question, and someone walking by might be able to chip-in with some useful advice. Cubicles are generally ranked next, followed by shared offices then private offices. If private/shared offices are used, then an open-door policy should be urged.
I don't think there is any one ideal solution as it really depends on your office culture, the size of the projects and teams and the nature of the work you are doing. Being in a flexible environment certainly helps. If I was setting up a new office, I would go for mostly open-plan with a handful of private offices and a couple of larger meeting/project rooms. Team dynamics would dictate exactly how the office space was used at any one time.
However, having a single desk anywhere that you can call your own is far more preferable to hot-desking! If you are in a project room with a team, it is very nice to be able to go back to your desk and feel at home. That is unless someone steals your desk while you are sequestered away, as happened to me 8^(
Re:Cube vs Office (Score:1)
there was an interesting article in the NYT a couple months ago about how Mayor Bloomberg is all about open work spaces; he has his desk in the middle of an open floor near his assistants, and everyone is encouraged to keep the info flowing. unfortunately, you have to pay to read it online now.
IMVHO and experience, problems have developed when I've been working with/near non-technical people. the constant barrage of computer question can drive me crazy. no offense, but middle-aged women are the WORST about this. as a result of annoying questions, i have turned into a total asshole at work, and i am much happier for it.
I just love my cubicle farm (Score:3)
Now excuse me while I head off to the bathroom and smash my head into the mirror there. It's theraputic.
Re:I just love my cubicle farm (Score:1)
Important thing to remeber when designing an office: Do NOT give people in a open environment speaker-phones!!! Only put speaker-phones in meeting rooms and (maybe) private offices.
Getting into "the zone" (Score:1)
Or, like I just did, you might just start reading Slashdot. I gotta get back to work...
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000
The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer (Score:2)
Had a very intersting table listing the "features" that top 10 percent programmers had vs bottom 10% programmers. His disclaimer was that he didn't know if the features made programmers better, or if better programmers demanded the features and got them due to talent. Very interesting things on the list including the ability to put DND on the phone, office, office space, etc.
Worth a look, even if it didn't pan out
diary to count interruptions (Score:2)
Sometimes when I needed quiet to figure something out, I'd go find an empty conference room and hide there with listings and work out the problem. That helped a lot. If no one knew where I was, they couldn't bug me. Even a private office doesn't do that for you.
Generally I've found open-plan to be intolerable because of the noise level. Cubes can be ok. 2-3 person shared offices are fine. I agree with the comments that in a private office you can lose contact with the rest of your team, but other than that, they're great.
The 2-3 person shared office is probably the best compromise in high-space-cost areas.
Cubes vs Shared Offices (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I fully understand why they wanted us to be moved with the other developers (which they moved us all to the 21st floor). However, mu cubicle is now in a high traffic area with low walls in front of the break room, with the nearest window being a good 50 feet away. I ended up snatching a bunch of foam core board from our GIS department and building walls, then going out and spening about 100 bucks on a set of noise-cancelling Sony digital headphones. Even then, I get interrupted at least 10-15 times a day for questions like, "Where'd you get those headphones?" and "Isn't my fish cool!" and blah blah blah.
Our web teams morale dropped quite a bit, and I also find myself going in about 6am to get any work done at all. My advice would be do whatever is necessary for the company, but also look at what moving the workers is going to do to their unspoken side like morale, etc.
it doesn't matter (Score:1)
wait and see
Re:it doesn't matter (Score:2, Informative)
Over the years I have see this office format work well.
1) Single small office big enough for two computer but one person normally but in emergency two. Non glaring light. Enough light to keep them from going blind and to read printouts. And cool to there liking. Also a small bookshelf. Decent chair and desk.
2) Non fancy cofference room that can take the whole team with out overflow problems and mutiple computer to allow hasing thing out. Include a white board projector whatever works.
3) A quite place just to let the mind rest. You cant keep reving it up all the time. A small garden does work wonders. There is one Anime studio in Japan that has a quite garden on the roof. Works wonders.
4) Use email for all normal traffic since it lets the recepiant answer when they can and keeps the question foccus. Phones when typing would be hard or impractical. Small mail box for dropping off picking up thing that cant be NETed around that is "outside" the office.
5) A place to crash. IE to get some sleep on long mightmare project. Nothing fancy. The small office would do. Still have my old airbed and pillow from one place I work at. Came in handy. There are always these insaine schedules and thing go wrong no matter how thing are layed out. I rather have a programmer that's on a roll or been working long hours just to get a few hour sleep then have them drive home and maybe never get there.
6) The head programmer may have a bigger office but is geared to small meeting of him/her and no more than two other people. Small table and two chairs and the normal std office. Good for quicky meeting. More then that size it cofference room!
If a team need open cubical to manage then there are major problems. IE poor orginization. Sorry contant instant communication just does not work. Everyond should know what to do and do it. If problems arise then the cofference room is the best place to handle it. Can handle from 2 to its design capasity. And in a pinch forms a spare programmers room or a different crash and burn room. Its funny but the Travel Channel has a report that people feel more "secure" not in open areas but more intimate areas. It was in spending money at Casino's but is appliable here also. Guess it the old survival skills of the mind gets split with the lower logic worring about dangers.
One last thing is a sign that leads into the programmers area stating the following:
Danger: Marketing Geek stay out! Tresspassers will be eaten!
Personal Experiences. Tradeoff: Cubes vs Offices. (Score:1)
First: The art of programming. This is a strong mental activity. Try this example: Count out loud from 100 down by 3's. After you get to 91, have somebody else start calling out random numbers. So far, I've only met one person who could keep going. He was a math professor with 20 years of experience working in a noisy environment.
Writing code is a lot more complex than merely counting down from 100 by 3's. I can easily spend 20 or 30 minutes constructing a mathematical model of the program in my mind.
It may seem like a good idea for folks to be able to easily talk. But the same circuits in my brain that process intelligible sounds, regardless of whether I can speak the language, are also used when I'm coding. Or debugging. Or writing english for that matter...
Audible (spoken) communication effectively kills my productivity. I lose concentration, the last half hour of my work is destroyed, new bugs are created that cost even more time, etc.
Visual: The human eye is are geared towards detecting changes in the surroundings visually. Ever see one of those snakes that has "protective camouflage coloration"? It's nearly invisible until it moves. Then you can see it instantly. Coupled with the wide field-of-view of the human eye's peripheral vision, you have a major source for interruptions.
Tactile: Humans, at least in our culture, don't touch except under very special circumstances. Check it out sometime. Even in the most crowded elevator, or a crowded bus, there is absolutely no physical contact. If there is physical contact, folks become distressed very quickly.
If the office is small enough that folks bump into one another... Well, that's the worst of all possible worlds...
So, Cubes vs Offices:
Open office: The worst of all worlds: Audible, Visual, and possibly Tactile distractions. However, it is the cheapest arrangement. And clueless managers like to be able to watch everyone...
Cubes: A GOOD cubical arrangement will block out Visual and Tactile distractions. A lousy cubical arrangement is basically a more expensive open office.
Cubes are sound-transparent, but provide the illusion of sound-opaqueness, so Audible distractions are *MUCH* worse.
They are relatively cheap. Easily modifiable. Easily altered. Favored by clueless managers who like to be able to walk around and verify that everyone is at least "trying" to work.
Private Offices: Depends on the walls. Could be no better than cubes. Could be the holy grail of work environments. Windows are best avoided, they provide a visual distraction and a source of glare on monitors. (Though some folks dislike caves.)
Semi-private offices: You either have Visual distractions, or you jump three feet in the air when you suddenly realize you're no longer alone. Possibly Tactile distractions. Probable Audible distractions. Could be almost as good as a Private Office. Could be as bad as an Open Office. All depends on your officemates.
Personal Experiences:
Open office: Got nothing done during the day. Got everything done at night, after everyone had left. Sometimes worked until after 3AM. Still got fired in the end...
Hardwall cubes, chest high: Good Visual/Tactical blockage. Heard every sound in the facility. Cheered when the guy who insisted on using the speakerphone for all his many calls was fired.
Softwall cubes, 6ft: Good Visual/Tactical blockage. Completely sound transparent. Had aisle cube, next to main elevators/stairs for the floor, across aisle from kitchenette where everyone went to take their breaks. Though they had to talk quite loudly to be heard over the copier that was also located there. Shared other cube wall with a fellow who was trying to transition to being a sports agent -- and on the phone constantly. Next cubical bay over was the sales team.
Productivity fell to zero. This was when I acquired a "background" noise source -- one of those ocean / brook / crickets noise sources -- which allowed to at least get some work done... I got a lot more work done on the weekends than I ever did during the week. Even though they turned the AC off on weekends, and I had triple-digit temperatures to work in...
For those who think that encouraging communications is a "good" thing, I would like to point out that sports-agent-wanabee-guy wrote the threading code that I took over. When I asked him where the mutexes were, he told me he had tried it without the mutexes, found it worked just fine, so he left them out. Suffice to say, the language I used while re-writing his code, and getting yelled at by my boss for wasting precious time, did not encourage teamwork...
Semi-private office: Had two officemates who were managing different projects. They were constantly in meetings in the office, or on the phone. Productivity: Zero.
Telecommuting: Private office. Absolutely NO Audible, Visual, or Tactile distractions. No hardware/software changes without my knowledge. Vastly superior hardware. Paradise.
However, long-term lack of social contact does degrade performance. It becomes too easy not to go out. Humans are, fundamentally, social animals. Total isolation does not become us.
Suggestions: Private office. Encourage group lunches. Encourage group activities outside of work, even if it's just a foosball table in the break room at the end of the day.
Curiously, this is remarkably similar to what Microsoft does. For all I might knock their despicable business practices, they do know how to maximize the productivity of their programmers...
Re:Personal Experiences. Tradeoff: Cubes vs Office (Score:2)
The above sounds very reasonable to my mind. Let me add that what I consider the most annoying source of interruption is telephone calls. No, not my own, but by officemates.
I'm currently in an office with three others who are on the same project team as I am. I find it incredibly distracting when someone else is talking on the phone to our customer -- part of my brain always wants to listen or is trying to analyse and understand the words that my ear hears. I get distracted and can't concentrate on my programming. (The effect is similar with face-to-face conversations but they're a fair bit less frequent than phone calls -- at least in the office.) It makes me want to have a private office.
The argument that's usually cited (let's ignore the fact that my workplace doesn't have private offices, except for the top two managers) is that having a group together in one room improves communication; it also lets you pick up things by chance that you happen to hear which you might not have thought to ask about otherwise. Well, maybe. But I still find it distracting when others speak.
Maybe it's just the way my brain works; I can't work when I'm listening to music with lyrics, either; instrumental music, on the other hand, is fine since my brain isn't constantly trying to process the sound to understand the words.
So for me, I'd probably go with private offices or small group offices (for those who can deal with that). I also really like your suggestiong of group lunches; it's a good way of being social and swapping some gossip -- and also finding out little things about how other projects or the whole company is going. (I've found that smokers often know more about how the company is going since they'll also chat during their cigarette breaks -- and since the boss smokes, he sometimes shares some information during such times as well. That still doesn't make me want to hang out with them, though ;)
some research on open-plan offices (Score:1)
The reference is: Teasley, S.D., Covi, L., Krishnan, M.S., & Olson, J.S. (2000). How does radical collocation help a team succeed? In Proceedings of CSCW 2000 (pp. 339-346). New York: ACM Press.
Contact me or the authors and we can send you a pdf. See also the technical reports link from the CREW web page at crew.umich.edu [umich.edu]
Peopleware (Score:2)
This book is best described as an 'anti-dilbert manifesto'.
Hard data for using offices (Score:2)