in reply to A quiet place to code...

I heard rumor of some management-speak article explaining how to attract and keep IT professionals. It purportedly listed "The Top ? Things Programmers Love" and "Walls and Doors" was on the list.

I am quite fortunate; my small company takes good care of the programmers. Everyone has an office, and we have a commitment to maintain that standard. It just makes sense.

Programmers need to concentrate. Now, in my case, that means a relatively quiet place where I can control the volume and severity of competing attention-grabbers. I find that though I can often focus fiercely on a task, shutting out all other stimuli (a trait that has gotten me in trouble with Mom, SO's, etc. ;-), noise and activity makes it more difficult to get into that state.

My current assignment has me in a cubicle (for the first time in my programming career). It is less-than-ideal :-) In an office environment, where everyone wants to be perceived as pleasant and friendly, it is normal to be greeted, in my cube, by each passer-by through the day. This is probably just my introversion showing through <nobr>(Myers-Briggs - INTP),</nobr> but I consider most of those greetings a distraction. There is a lady on our floor who likes to have very LOUD speaker-phone conversations. The printer has a distinctive "jet-spooling-up" sound. The project manager is two cubes away (so, a little over 6 feet), so any conversation about me or my projects will get my attention.

Cubicles seem to encourage a perpetual "open-door" policy; if you want someone's attention, just go get it. With no mechanism available to signify "I'm busy and concentrating, please come back after lunch," interruptions are guaranteed.

I enjoy working where I am. Let's be clear about that. :-)

<WINDMILL-TILTING>
How much does it cost a company to house its programmers in sheetrock? Let's compare some numbers. A 9' x 8' cubicle occupies 72 square feet. Our offices are 9'11" x 11'6". Call that 115 square feet. Real estate in NW Oklahoma City (the only pricing data I have) has commercial office space renting for around $12 per square foot per year. (115 - 72) * 12 == $516 per year. That assumes that you build the offices bigger than the cubes. You wouldn't necessarily have to do that.

How much does it cost to build out an office vs. cubicles? At da Vinci (my employer), we would pay about $500 (estimated) to build out three offices in a new space in our building. Furniture? We spent ~$1000 per office on Hon brand furniture. Modular office furniture is ghastly expensive. Browsing through an office furniture catalog, it looks like those 9' x 8' cubicles would cost around $3000 each. Cubicle walls, desks and cabinets are quite expensive.

So, how many years does it take, saving $516 per year, just to make up the extra cost in modular furniture?

How much does a company pay in salary for a programmer? Does it make sense to scrimp $500 or $1000 per year on that person who costs $30000? $45000? $60000? $50K salary equals roughly $25 per hour. Could a noisy, interruption-prone workplace cost that person 20 hours in lost productivity over the course of an entire year?

Housing programmers in cubes is stupid.
</WINDMILL-TILTING> ;-)

Russ
Brainbench 'Most Valuable Professional' for Perl

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
(jcwren) RE: (2) A quiet place to code...
by jcwren (Prior) on Oct 15, 2000 at 19:45 UTC
    While I agree with everything you say, there's an issue you may have overlooked.

    While modular office space is expensive, once you own it, you can rearrange it. Once you put up sheetrock, you're stuck with it. Also, converting a cube farm into sheetrock offices makes the entire office space seem a maze of corridors and doors. This is usually not a desired effect when you want to show someone your office building.

    Like it or not, thanks to the Scandinavians and a few other "designers", wide open office space is "what people like". I like a small, dark, warm office. But, after walking into IBM buildings in Raleigh, I can appreicate the negative psychological impact that the corridor maze *does* have.

    It's a two edged sword, in many respects. Programmers get the environment that most of the them want, but it does make for a "us vs. them" type office environment. I don't think it's the cause, but I do think it encourages departmental isolation, staking out of territory, etc.

    You also run into the issue that you want people to *feel* that they can communicate readily with their co-workers. Among people in the same discipline, this isn't much of a problem (programmers to programmers, hardware guys to hardware guys, etc). But when you walk into the corridor maze looking for the hardware guys, it's a lot less friendly feeling than the open cube farm. And then there are the people with their doors always shut (that would be me).

    I've worked in both enviroments. While I prefer the private office by far and large, from a management standpoint, and a building facilities standpoint, I can see the value of cubes. I don't how many times at Hayes we went through re-cubing. But I know it was a helluva lot cheaper than building new walls. Not to mention, you *can* take it with you when you go...

    One final note I just remembered. Depending on who owns the building, they may or may not want the build out. Depends on your lease, the location, etc. Most people leasing buildings will permit buildouts, but sometimes this is not the case.

    --Chris

    e-mail jcwren
[reply]
      While modular office space is expensive, once you own it, you can rearrange it.

      jcwren, have you ever worked someplace where the cubes were actually rearranged while you were working there? Do you know of anyone who has? I'll be really surprised if that's the case.

      The idea that cubes are more cost-effective because they can be rearranged doesn't hold up, overall. The problem isn't the cube walls themselves, it's all of the wiring that has to get snaked through them. Redoing the wiring drives up the cost of rearranging cubes to the point where you have to absorb the cost over multiple rearrangements for cubes to win in the long run. And rearranging cubes interrupts work, so no one does it often enough or frequently enough to recoup the extra initial cost.

      Most research shows that (most) programmers produce the most code when they can spend 3-4 hours at a stretch on a problem, uninterrupted. You know, that midnight-hacking zone we've all experienced, when the ideas are right there in your head and the code is flowing freely... After an interruption, it takes (on average) about 10-15 minutes to get your head back to where it was pre-interrupt. (Yes, that's an average, so not everyone conforms to the model; more than a few monks here seem to bounce back and forth effortlessly between answering every question in sight and writing some amazing code.)

      So the "best" environment for writing a lot of code is one that minimizes interruptions. For most people, that's walls and a door that can be shut. Many can put on the headphones to work uninterrupted in a cube, but you don't lose that ability if you're in a room instead.

      You're right, though, that facilities people (including landlords) love cubes, but in my experience, it's simply because they're more convenient for them to work with. That convenience creates some small, artificial savings that lose out when you take a look at the overall cost, especially in terms of programmer productivity. A company gets more bang for the buck out of making its people as productive as possible, not sqeezing a few more dollars out of facility costs.
[reply]
        Cubicles Don't Work.

        I've worked somewhere where they rearranged cubicles regularly. Generally, people would move every year to year and a half. When I left, they had cut my department, and I'd moved my equipment out of one cube into another, and would have had to move all of my servers AND that previously-moved equipment elsewhere.

        There were no moves in that company that didn't involve rearranging at least one wall.

        Wiring would have been a major problem. I needed lots of juice for all the computers I had in there, as well as a special network connection and an external phone line.

        Invariably, this meant that anyone who moved had to spend half a day arranging the new cubicle layout, or more.

        Then again, this is the company that owned the building but gave departments money to rent (yes, rent) floor space from some other department in the company. I think its signature product should have been Crazy Accounting Schemes, not Laser Printers.

[reply]
        A door with a lock on it would be the best solution for me to be productive. I agree whole heartedly with you when you say

        So the "best" environment for writing a lot of code is one that minimizes interruptions.

        And I also want to re-itterate another thing you said

        Most research shows that (most) programmers produce the most code when they can spend 3-4 hours at a stretch on a problem, uninterrupted. You know, that midnight-hacking zone we've all experienced, when the ideas are right there in your head and the code is flowing freely... After an interruption, it takes (on average) about 10-15 minutes to get your head back to where it was pre-interrupt.

        These are both very important topics to me and I am betting to most of you...

        Thanks for the feedback

[reply]
RE: RE: A quiet place to code...
by el-moe (Scribe) on Oct 18, 2000 at 10:43 UTC
    Thanks for the thought you put into this post Russ.

    I showed it to some of the "powers that be" and I got a little bit of a wierd response. It was something like...

    But the thread is slanted to the programmers point of view... that's one sided...

    I was a little surprised to hear that the programmers opinions were not important to them.

    Can you believe it?

    Thanks again.

[reply]
      But the thread is slanted to the programmers point of view... that's one sided...

      Wow, that's unfortunate. I formulated that viewpoint while acting in a managerial role, deciding how to handle office space in a rapidly growing small company. We assumed that since most companies seem to use cubicles, there must be a good reason, right? ;-)

      Wrong.

      There are some valid viewpoints in favor of cubes. See jcwren elsewhere in this thread for some examples. However, I honestly believe the main motivation for cubes in most companies is "pecking-order." It is easy to establish a hierarchy of importance with cubes. Some go near windows, some are "interior", some are "high-traffic'" You can make cubes tiny, small, medium, large, corner, etc. The managers have to have some visible "perk" to set them apart from the workers, right? Otherwise, why would anyone respect them? (That the manager should be good enough, and demonstrably competent must really frighten most managerial staff...)

      We decided, at da Vinci, to aim toward a more egalitarian arrangement. Everyone has an office, even the interns. The owner's office is the same size as mine. Mine is the same size as the most junior programmer in the company. New computers don't always go the most senior person (and rarely go to a "manager").

      Every collection of human beings (especially coders with lots of laziness, hubris and impatience) will have a pecking order. However, it is simply irresponsible to sacrifice the most instrumental tool for efficiency and productivity (a quiet, distraction-free workplace) on the altar of "managerial perks."

      Good luck with your "powers." Who knows? They certainly didn't have a substantive response to it. Maybe they'll honestly investigate the idea and consider "thinking outside the box." <tongue-in-cheek>People like us usually have a hard time finding "the box," but with patience and honest discourse, even managers can be logical once-in-a-while.</tongue-in-cheek>

      ;-)

      Russ
      Brainbench 'Most Valuable Professional' for Perl

[reply]

In Section Meditations