Coding Horror: This is your Anti-Productivity Pod

December 13, 2004

This is your Anti-Productivity Pod

Dilbert cartoon

As noted in the Joel on Software thread Workspace quality references:

I have acquired an interest in workspace quality after spending many years in software development and having worked in a variety of workspaces. When I started out I didn't give much thought to workspace quality. It was just there. Something that came with the job and there wasn't much need or possibility of doing anything about it. And I was quite fortunate in that my first employer provided a very good work envirionment.
Over the years with several changes of employer and different assignments and various office moves for each employer, I came to realize that the quality of the workspace can have quite an effect on productivity as well as job satisfaction. In fact, one wonders why anyone is concerned with implementing software development processes when most developers are having a hard time concentrating on any task for more than ten minutes between ringing telephones in the next cubicle, howling HVAC systems or any of the other myriad distractions that prevent one from just sitting down and getting a 2-3 hour task completed.

This is also covered in the Peopleware chapter titled "You Never Get Anything Done Around Here Between 9 and 5":

How to explain then the fact that software people as well as workers in other thought-intensive positions are putting in so many extra hours? A disturbing possibility is that overtime is not so much a means to increase the quantity of work time as to improve its average quality. You hear evidence that this is true in such frequently repeated statements as these:

"I get my best work done in the early morning, before anybody else arrives."
"In one late evening, I can do two or three days' worth of work."
"The office is a zoo all day, but by about 6 p.m., things have quieted down and you can really accomplish something."

To be productive, people may come in early or stay late or even try to escape entirely, by staying home for a day to get a critical piece of work done. One of our seminar participants reported that her new boss wouldn't allow her to work at home, so on the day before an important report was due, she took a sick day to get it done. Staying late or arriving early or staying home to work in peace is a damning indictment of the office environment. The amazing thing is not that it's so often impossible to work in the workplace; the amazing thing is that everyone knows it and nobody ever does anything about it.

Changing your work environment, however, is easier discussed than done. I think the only way I could change mine is if I actually quit my job. Extreme? Maybe, but I'm not alone in feeling that way:

A California company that I consult for is very much concerned about being responsive to its people. Last year, the company's management conducted a survey in which all programmers (more than a thousand) were asked to list the best and the worst aspects of their jobs. The manager who ran the survey was very excited about the changes the company had undertaken. He told me that the number two problem was poor communication with upper management. Having learned that from the survey, the company set up quality circles, gripe sessions, and other communication programs. I listened politely as he described them in detail. When he was done, I asked what the number one problem was. "The environment," he replied. "People were upset about the noise." I asked what steps the company had taken to remedy that problem. "Oh, we couldn't do anything about that," he said. "That's outside our control."
It was as though the programmers had complained that there was too much gravity, and management had decided after due reflection that they couldn't really do much about it; it was a problem whose solution was beyond human capacity. This is a policy of total default.
Changing the environment is not beyond human capacity.

It may not be beyond human capacity, but it's hard to envision change when only managers have offices.

Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions

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Comments

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.

Jeff Atwood on December 13, 2004 11:56 PM

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.

Robert Watkins on December 14, 2004 5:10 AM

I thought of some solutions on my blog: http://francisoud.blogspot.com/2004/12/anti-productivity-pod.html
If you want to add comments...

Benjamin Francisoud on December 14, 2004 8:16 AM

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

Sikko2go on December 14, 2004 9:46 AM

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...

Ab_Normal on December 14, 2004 4:02 PM

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.

Jerry Dennany on December 14, 2004 8:44 PM

..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.

Rob Garrett on December 15, 2004 11:14 AM

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!

Dianne Favre on August 18, 2007 8:26 AM

rhymes with

dave on March 12, 2008 3:54 PM

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.

Andrew on July 4, 2008 12:45 PM

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.

* http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/1C139

plus one of:

* http://www.aearoweb.com/sites/earsamples/

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.

mrdude on October 18, 2008 5:59 PM

Seba on May 14, 2009 10:03 AM