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

cube farms!!

[jeffy124]

programmers get privacy from others, quietness, play music w/o others being able to hear, more decorating space for things like magnetic dart boards, more storage space for books, toys, etc. the list goes on....

Re:cube farms!!

[madburn]

We used cubicle parts to make "pits". We created largish areas out of cubicle walls and made sure the entrance was rather small (not an entirely open side) and was not accessible from major traffic flow. Inside the pits we would have inner half-walls between every two or three developers. There was a large space in the center so nobody was too close to the other side. There were many advantages:

• 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.

make the most of what space you get

[NaturePhotog]

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.

We went from offices to cubes

[Aardvark99]

My company, a little over a year ago, moved offices. The software developers (including myself) went from private offices to cubes.

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.

Re:all in all its just another brick in the wall

[4of12]

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.