Comment by timv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timv | Hacker News Reader

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One of the startups I worked for moved office a few times as we grew and leases expired etc.

The engineering team pushed for "quiet private space". We avoided asking for "offices" so that the focus was on what sort of environment we needed, and didn't jump straight into the status and/or cost issues.

It never happened.

The main reason wasn't cost savings (though that was definitely a factor) or management paranoia (which wasn't too bad) or status/ego. It was simply a total failure to understand the process of software engineering, despite being told by the people who were employed to do that job.

The people planning the offices were from a sales background. They were extroverts. They hated quiet spaces. They'd walk into the office and immediately start up some useless conversation that broke everyone's concentration. No matter how many times we tried to explain to them that we got far more work done if they'd just shut the f* up (we'd usually put it more politely than that), they'd keep on thinking that he most important thing was to have a "cool", "vibrant" space and, to them, that meant open-plan and loud.

You were making a great point until They'd walk into the office and immediately start up some useless conversation and they'd just shut the f up.

They both illustrate you suffer from the same condition they are: that neither one of you respects the way the other is. What silence is to you (an me perhaps) social interaction and "pointless chat" is to them. If your productivity went up by them not talking, theirs will go down for the same reason.

I realise my post was a little unclear.

Yes, often they'd carry on a conversation between themselves, which was an interruption, but was a symptom of the poorly designed office space. It's hardly their fault that their job and/or personality thrives on conversation. That was why the engineering team wanted a separate quiet work space for our team, so they could do their thing without breaking the productivity of the dev team.

But what I meant with They'd walk into the office and immediately start up some useless conversation was that they'd start it with us. Partly because they wanted conversation but also because they thought it was good for us. That the office was too quiet and we needed to liven it up a bit. That the reason we weren't talking is because we needed someone to break the ice for us.

That failure to understand what makes an engineering team productive led them to try and do things that were totally counter-productive, but they just didn't see it. It's in that context that they really needed to just stop.

Good teams are diverse, whether it's in sex, color, religion, nationality or preferred working conditions. I wish companies offered both open and private space. And by private space I don't mean a beanbag in the other side of the room. Some days I don't mind the chatter around me, and some days my stomach makes the loudest and strangest gurgling noises that you can imagine and I'd rather my coworkers didn't hear them.

Scenario:

- Person A works requires social interaction to be productive.

- Person B works requires silence to be productive.

Problem:

- Person A is actively disrupting Person B's work to be productive.

- Person B is not actively disrupting Person A but Person A is left unproductive as a result of non-action

The only practical solution is to have Person A work with other Person As and have a separate work area for Person B's. The solution is not to sacrifice Person B's productivity for Person A's benefit. This is a managerial and office layout problem, characterizing it as a problem of Person B's ability to be understanding is not fair nor a rational course of action.

In fact, supposing it was a true case of something like misophonia, this attitude towards Person B ought to rightfully be considered a form of physical discrimination. I know that would not hold up in our current system, which is tragic.

Not really, because the statement implies that the Sales people would go into the Engineering department and do that. You'd have a point if members of the Engineering department would go into the Sales area and demand they all shut the fuck up.

> The people planning the offices were from a sales background.

That's the problem. You have to insist that an engineer is on the office planning committee.

I pushed hard to be included in the choice of office space at my last startup and managed to get us a "silent" room. (Almost as good as private offices.)

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