Offices vs. Cubes For Developers?

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?

Comments

RE:Open Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

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

*Definately* offices.

[Ayende Rahien]

Read any book on managing programmers, and you'll discover that programmers are much more efficent in an office than in a cubicle.
Read: This article
Basically programmers need concentration to work, and being in a cubicle all day mean that they are constantly being interuppted.
Not good!

Here's a web site that might help

[hether]

This site: http://12simplesecrets.com/management.htm says that the productivity rate is 2.5x better for people in offices over those in cubes. They draw on several other studies to come to that conclusion.

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. :) And having one with a real wall that has a window on it is the best. I do find that now that I have my own office I tend to get a lot less done. Nobody to look over my shoulder and see I'm not on task.