As noted in the Joel on Software thread Workspace quality references:
This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/12/this-is-your-anti-productivity-pod.html
This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/12/this-is-your-anti-productivity-pod.html
Also, I’m not sure if this is legal or what, but the “the web resource on the study of interruptions in human-computer interaction” put up the entire PDF of Peopleware:
( link removed by request of Dorset House )
Great book.
I’m sitting here in the office I share with the other two people on the IT team, wearing my hat and my mukluks because the heat doesn’t work (and if I put a portable heater under my desk the circuit powering my desk goes), shivering and nodding…
Changing the environment may actually be harder than you think. At my current place of employment, there is a floor that we are not allowed to remodel… the lease says so.
However, if you want to get to the core of the problem: setting up “quality circles” and “gripe sessions” only takes time, and you can always “encourage” people to work extra to make up for it. Remodelling costs money.
I thought of some solutions on my blog: http://francisoud.blogspot.com/2004/12/anti-productivity-pod.html
If you want to add comments…
Yes, this comic is so apropos that Steve McConnell used it on p507 of “Rapid Development” in his chapter on Productivity Environments.
Unfortunately, I still work in a cubicle farm, and as of yet have not found a job with an “enlightened” company.
wonderful explanation. I also couldn’t resist the urge of writing a small blog entry at my own modest blog, handling about these things, because they’re so important in getting enough satisfaction from one’s daily job.
Also: I’d say that this link to the Peopleware book is very illegal. Curious as I am, I checked out the rest of that site, and it doesn’t really look like some cracker who thinks it’s fun pdf-ing other people’s copyrighted works; but more something of a psychological scientist interested in aspects that Peopleware talks about
…and the government’s answer to a quieter working environment - the cube!
Yeah right, they just provide a place for your peers to congregate so you never get any work done. At least if I had an office I could use it as some place to sleep in the afternoon.
It was bad enough before but now that we have SPEAKER PHONES there are people who simply will not participate in a conference call without using that feature. It drives me nuts because I sit between two people on different projects who use theirs constantly and sometimes they are both on at the same time on different calls. So I have insanity in stereo. It gets really fun when I’m on a call (I usually use my headphones) and they are also on calls. That’s when I take off my headphones and put my SPEAKER PHONE on as loud as I can!
rhymes with
The cubicles at my work are set up in 4’s, and I am the lucky web developer who gets to share his cubicle-set with 3 HR workers who are constantly rambling on their phones. Of course right across on the other side is the project manager who, of course, has to frequently communicate with many different people.
Luckily though I’m allowed to have an MP3 player here, so I put my headphones in (which work great at keeping outside noises out) and work away…when the battery isn’t dead.
I had this same problem a while back, but in my case, the fan whine frequency and noise level combined with the HVAC fans, easy distractability, and weird sinus pressure made it extremely difficult for me to concentrate. In my situation, my best option would have been a separate office (which I had for a while at one job) and mainlining antihistamine and Ritalin while working on a fanless 1Ghz PC with a solid-state drive – neither of which existed in 1995. The office would have been orders of magnitude more expensive than the other items on the programmer’s bill of rights.
I found my solution from a coworker when visiting her father who works in industrial safety (hazardous materials remediation, specifically), and paging through one of his trade magazines. It finally led me to what I use nowadays: a $30 portable solution which I’ve also used to great effect on airplanes as well.
plus one of:
The latter site provides free samples. I prefer the corded ones, but they all have stems, which makes handling them a lot easier. Since either option alone is intended for much worse conditions, I was happy to pay a decent sum of money for such a solution, the combination of which I expected would exceed my needs in the typical office environment.
I’ve found the combination of the two to be extremely effective, reasonably convenient, and luckily, inexpensive. It’s also a clear indicator to my less polite interruptors that I’m trying to concentrate. Management could easily provide this kind of solution to show that while they can’t budget for offices or noise abatement, they recognize the problem and are willing to pay a reasonable amount for a flexible solution – and if they won’t, then you know it’s just lip service.
One objection I expect to hear is that it’s inconvenient or dorky. So when I compare myself to people who are forced to use this for safety’s sake, and am glad I work in a creative, safe environment, I figured I could act elitist and moan and whine about the environment to an unreceptive or constrained management, or I could use the solution they use when they go to their real, respectable, albeit blue-collar jobs, and solve the problem.
wonderful explanation. I also couldn’t resist the urge of writing a small blog entry at my own modest blog, handling about these things, because they’re so important in getting enough satisfaction from one’s daily job.
Also: I’d say that this link to the Peopleware book is very illegal. Curious as I am, I checked out the rest of that site, and it doesn’t really look like some cracker who thinks it’s fun pdf-ing other people’s copyrighted works; but more something of a psychological scientist interested in aspects that Peopleware talks about
http://bigelite.ru