Offices with open floor plans have become ubiquitous in the tech industry. The idea is that eliminating physical barriers between workspaces also eliminates intellectual or interpersonal barriers to collaboration. And, of course, it’s a cost-efficient way to squeeze a lot of people into a small space.
The problem is, programmers hate open floor plans.
The CEO of Stack Overflow, Joel Spolsky, laid out some of the reasons programmers prefer their own space in an interview at the GeekWire technology conference. He pointed out that programming is a solitary activity, and developers don’t benefit from overhearing conversations.
And in an open, noisy environment, that’s a difficult thing for many developers to do. At Spolsky’s three companies (Stack Overflow, Trello, and Fog Creek Software), programmers either work from home or have private offices with closing doors and natural light, he said.
Facebook’s new eight acres of open-floor office space in Silicon Valley, on the other hand, is a good example of what Spolsky thinks companies should not do.
Hundreds of developers echoed that sentiment on Reddit, in a discussion thread about Spolsky’s talk. In addition to lamenting open floor plans, they also commiserated about other distractions like unnecessary meetings and another staple of tech offices: tabletop games that generate a lot of noise.
Based on an analysis of 10,000 programming sessions recorded from 86 programmers using Eclipse and Visual Studio, and a survey of 414 programmers, we found:
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A programmer takes 10-15 minutes to start editing code after resuming work from an interruption.
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When interrupted during an edit of a method, a programmer resumed work in less than a minute only 10 percent of the time.
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A programmer is likely to get just one uninterrupted two-hour session in a day.
So how would you as a programmer overcome this open office craziness and save yourself from distractions? Here we have listed several useful tips we think might be helpful.
Noise cancelling headphone / earphone
Most of the developers probably don’t have the luxury to work from home as of yet. If you’re stuck in an office and forced to focus in a noisy surrouding, here’s to your rescue: Sony WH-1000XM2, a great price-performance ratio high-end noise cancelling headphone that gives you back your inner zen in the mid of insanities.
Quiet corner
Most of the open floor plan offices are big enough to allow some quiet corners, but most managers don’t know or don’t have the incentive to optimize the usage of it. The result being, you often see a row of noisy followed by a row of developers, followed by a row of noisy guys and so on so forth. If you’re able to negotiate with your manager so that you can work in a quieter corner of the buzz, definitely do it.
Alternative work schedule
If possible, an alternative work schedule allows you to have minimal but enough overlap with people you’ll need to work with. You then get to focus on coding when office is almost empty.
Work from home
Better yet, if you can work from home, you naturally get away from the sources of noise. But be sure to communicate well with your managers so that they don’t think you’re doing nothing at home.