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Cubicles a Giant Mistake
J to the D writes "Apparently even the designer of the cubicle believes now that they are a bad idea." From the article: "After years of prototyping and studying how people work, and vowing to improve on the open-bullpen office that dominated much of the 20th century, Propst designed a system he thought would increase productivity (hence the name Action Office). The young designer, who also worked on projects as varied as heart pumps and tree harvesters, theorized that productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them, not just stacked in an in-box."
I tend to agree, although don't forget that cubicles are a huge imporvement over rows and rows of desks with zero privacy whatsoever. Personally, I'd rather have an office, or at least a cubicle-sized space with a door I can close. It's very distracting for some people to hear everyone's phone conversations, music choices, etc. When I work on a problem, I tend to go lock myself in a lab or some other closed space so I can have "alone time" and carefully consider things.
:-)
It wouldn't be hard at all to give current cubicles full-sized walls and doors. I think it would greatly improve productivity. Think of how many times you've had to listen to people talking two feet away from you while you're trying to concentrate.
One of the main barriers to adoption is the fact that you can't oversee your staff like you can in a cubicle farm or open office. But then again, if you have to constantly watch them, do you really want them as employees?
I don't think it's practical to give everyone a corner office, but everyone _could_ have a window.
In Peopleware, Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister observe that work better in offices with windows. When this is pointed out, management usually says "sure, but it's impossible to give everyone a room with a window."
DeMarco and Lister's reply is that in fact every hotel in the world manages to do this.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Now, I'm a bit smarter than that. All my surfing is logged on my home computer. My home computer is my proxy. Easy enough to do, though I did study CS for many years. Funny, though, because the system admin wanted me to run a spyware remover on my desktop at work, that I've used for two years now. It came back with only one cookie that it thought was set to last to long. He was stunned. Not bad for all that time here.
Check out the article here by Kathy Sierra (of Head First fame). She quotes neuroscientist Elizabeth Gould of Princeton saying "complex surroundings create a complex brain". Basically, a monotonous environment causes the brain to stop producing new neurons. For years, it was thought that we were born with all the neurons we would ever have, largely because all studies of primate brains involved keeping the monkeys in cages -- an environment that inhibits neuron formation and growth! Now research shows that a stimulating environment fosters neuron formation and reduces brain stress. Time to bust out the electric screwdriver!
Just junk food for thought...
At the risk of drawing derision on financial software development, we couldn't possibly do what we do with offices. When the trading desk has a problem with your software system and you're bleeding money, it's battle stations. Much easier to have a big wide open room with everyone right there madly working on the solution. More sources of input, less redundant communication. The benefits of that are too good compared to the benefits of an office -- you just have to learn how to concentrate in the middle of a battlefield, sort of like that guy in the Seven Samurai who makes himself sleep when the time's available (and only when it's available!).
Course, we don't use cubes either, just a wide open floor with desks.
Anyone who works in a job that requires any kind of concentration (software development being the most obvious example) will, given the opportunity, enter a state of "flow" where they are wholly committed to the work they're doing.
Yeah, that's nice in theory. In practice, the people most dedicated to The Flow (tm), are the antisocial, uncooperative nitwits who hole themselves up in their offices for 8+ hours each day, only to turn out piles of un-reviewed, un-documented, poorly-specified crap (whether code or otherwise).
With no exceptions, the best tech workers I know are balanced, social people who prefer not to hole up in their offices. The best coding environment I ever worked in was a room of 6 developers, separated by bookshelves, with small break-out rooms available for truly private conversations. Of course, you do actually have to like your coworkers for a setup like that to work, but I digress....
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I'm just starting to experiment with sensory deprivation at work. I'm using a set of the monitors in glasses and also a set of ear defenders with an old set of mini headphones embedded.
It's going pretty well and I can pretty much stay in the flow no matter what. Although I do worry about the fire alarms. Next I'm going to try a recliner.
Ideally I'd like to dump the keyboard and mouse, but I can't think how.
I'm much better at getting through work, although my wierdness factor is just gone up an order of magnitude.
I find open plan by far the best working environment for concentrating: being part of the environment means that I can let it all pass me by without breaking my concentration. If you hear a thud, you can just glance over, see that one of your colleagues has knocked over the water-cooler, and carry on working without breaking the flow. The buzz of background noise means that no noise really stands out - unlike say a library, where the noise of the person shuffling their papers may lead you to want to kill.
Of course it works the other way as well - if you really needed a break at the point where the water-cooler toppled, what better excuse could you have?
Perhaps you've never worked in a well-planned open-plan environment? I'm used to offices with sufficient space, lots of noise-absorbent material, and laid out so that you never have more than 10-15 people in direct sight.
This article is a bit wanky, but makes some interesting points towards the end about the effectiveness of the environment (BA's headquarters at Waterside, a building I've worked at) being dependent on the motivation of the management team. This article is an interesting review of how office layout can affect your team's effectiveness. Both well worth a read.
Cheers, Mike
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
Actually, that isn't 'flow'. It's Attention Deficit Disorder. It's very, very common among computer programmers, as intelligent people with ADD will self select CS because the instant feedback gives an immediate reward for concentration, and therefore they feel more successful at computer work than other endeavors.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocus
I now have two offices. Both are in the same building about 30 feet from each other.
The larger office is my public office. It used to be a conference room but is now packed with book shelves, a several tables and desks, and a number of computers. Any more, I spend about three fourths of my workday in it.
The smaller, private office is very quiet. It is well insulated and has no telephone. It has a large comfortable easy chair pushed up to a desk with a couple of computers and a monitor. It also has a CD player and small speakers, but I hardly turn it on. Everyone knows to bother me there only if it is really important.
I can usually accomplish more software development work in two uninterrupted hours in the private office than I can in 8 hours in the public office.
All it takes is one or two interruptions in that two hours and my productivity drops to about the same as in the public office.
SNAP!!!
Yes, if you are easily distracted, have trouble getting into a mental/emotional state where you can work and think clearly, and once in "the zone" you are hyperfocused on your goal, then you may have ADD. It might be associated with hyperactivity, or with inattention/phasing out. In my case, it's associated with an astonishingly small amount of mental RAM and extreme sluggishness in the morning before my first dose of (no I don't believe in Xenu) drugs.
If you're a coffee addict or smoker, and you feel large amounts of these stimulants help you to function normally (and when you try to come off them you just CAN'T), that's more evidence that ADD may be responsible. Ask your doctor for a referral to a (good) psychiatrist!
By the way, ADD can be successfully managed with a lot less drugs and a lot more yoga, and it has been associated with people like Einstein who clearly had a "nerd personality" but definitely not ASD. So it's not a delinquency/criminal illness and it's not mental retardation and it's DEFINITELY not an excuse for lazy people to get high! (I am a Buddhist and I hate drugs - I won't even take strong herbs without a doctor's orders.) Actually, there's often a genetic cause and usually related to the ASD gene (but with a different expression in brain function).
Bring on the pink Hello Kitty labcoat for use in all those laser labs where my sparkly things are banned!
xx
Rocket
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
I still dont understand why companies dont like telecommuting.
In the modern world of email, instant-messaging as well as things like VOIP/voice chat and video confrencing, there is no reason that you couldnt have, say, developers working from home.
No need to spend money even on cubes or open-plan office space.
Have meeting rooms for those times when a face-to-face meeting is the only way to get things done and other alternatives wont work.
Management can see how much work is being done by looking at how much code employees commit to the reository. Or by looking at how many of their assigned bugs or features or tasks they complete and sign off on (including how long it takes them to do each one).
Advantages of working from home as I see it:
1.No need to commute to work (saves money and time as well as saving the environment)
2.Saves the company money in that they dont need to spend as much on cubes/offices/space, electricity etc etc etc.
3.Allows workers to work a little more flexibly (in that as long as they are working the right number of hours, they dont necessarily need to be 9-5 mon-fri). Want to go to the movies? Work late other nights that week and take friday afternoon off.
Living with school-age kids? Start work when they are off at school, work through until they come home, then do stuff with the kids until bed-time and spend a couple hours working after the kids are in bed to make up for the hours you didnt work in the afternoon.
Need to go to the bank to sort something out? Go to the bank and make up the work later that day.
4.Allows workers to work in what they might consider a better environment (Want to have your music playing? No problems. Dont want to wear a tie? No problems.)