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Best Seating Arrangement For a Team of Developers?
TekNullOG writes "I was given the job to prepare the logistics involved with moving our office. At the same time my bosses asked me to look into buying new desks for a small team of four developers and to consider if it could benefit the team to sit at a round table. In many offices and departments it increases productivity and makes collaboration easy. However, I am concerned that putting developers around a table could potentially be distracting consequently diminishing productivity by increasing coding errors. What are your thoughts?"
This is an awful idea. I've been in that situation, not quite a round table, but 5 guys in the same room. It's a great way to not get shit done, and have a lot of conversations about the latest MMO. At that time it was Everquest. I guess it'd be Starcraft now.
In addition, the foul odors emitted in that room were quite offensive. The farting, sweating, lack of showering...etc.... The best configuration for programmers is individual offices.
Completely agree. Need private office with a collaboration area or lab. In 27 years of sw engineering, that was the best, most productive setup. The team would congregate in the lab every day for an hour or two, but when we really needed to buckle down and seriously code, the private office was great.
I strongly agree that developers need their own office with a door. There are times as a dev when you need to close the door and have no distractions for a few hours straight. A personal office allows that.
At my work R&D has offices in a circle around a shared bench area. If you want to collaborate you can go to the center area or use someone's office. If you want to listen in you just have to leave your door open. If you need some privacy and no distractions you can close your door. Best of all worlds.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
If you want to be productive, buy and read the book. Better buy two copies and give one to your manager to read.
I've worked in quite a few different situations over the years, both as a developer and developer/manager:
a) a shared trestle table with 6 programmers facing across each other in pairs
b) a private office in a group of 8 offices surrounding a common area with couches and floor-to-ceiling whiteboards
c) a low bench in the back of a semi-trailer on a folding chair (luckily only for a week of 14-hour days)
d) a shared office with one other person
e) a regular private office
f) a shared office with three other people
g) a standard 6' high cubicle farm with your back to the 'door' on busy aisles, next to the creative department with 'open plan' tables, 4 to a 'pod' all facing the center
By FAR the best situation was b). The doors and half the wall facing the common area were glass with blinds. You could leave the door open and blinds up if you felt like being 'part of the community', or you could close the blinds and the door and turn on some music - without headphones - to focus for as long as you wanted. Discussions were held in someone's office or taken out to the common area for more of a group discussion.
The shared offices weren't bad, as you'd establish a rapport with your office mate(s) and come to some understanding of how your mate(s) worked.
The worst is the situation I'm in now - the cubicle farm next to the 'open-plan' teams. There's random noise all day, people having meetings in their cubicles or on the phone all day with customers. The only way to focus is to put on studio headphones and crank up the volume, and then you end up with people standing behind you in the cubicle talking at you for five minutes before you realize they're even there.
And since it's all open, everyone feels free to shout questions to each other over the cubicle walls instead of sending an IM, walking over to ask a question quietly, or take the discussion to a meeting room. And having a conversation with one of your direct reports means scheduling a meeting room or standing out in the hall outside the office.
Needless to say, I get at least twice as much done in a given period when I work at home. The dev team is always coming up with new excuses to work from home. And, of course, senior management, who all have nice window offices, can't understand how it could be difficult to work in that environment.