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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Based on this experience, I think the optimal solution is the 3-5 person team room. It works well because it allows for a high degree of collaboration while keeping folks outside the team at arms length to limit distraction. In this environment, we shipped a working product written from scratch within 3 months.

I cannot even begin to imagine how anybody could find that desirable. 3-5 people in one room? So you still get distractions, lack of privacy, and the room will probably be too damn hot more often than not (some companies get this part right, most don't in my experience)... and unless you entire team is those 3-5 people, you still don't get the purported advantage of maximum ability to communicate and collaborate without having to get up and walk somewhere. This actually sounds like the worst of all worlds to me.

Then again, I'm strongly biased towards the belief that programmers should have private offices with doors that close.

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A team room can be a great solution if it's done thoughtfully. The big drawback to private offices is that it can inhibit the cross-polination of projects that results in revolutionary ideas. A few rules about group offices that seem to help:

-The team decides the furniture layout.

-The team members don't have to be on the same project, but they should perform similar functions. Don't put the project managers in the same room as the developers!

-There should be ample meeting space separate from the group office space.

-The team needs someone who is senior enough to lead the group if they need rules on distractions and interruptions. For example, in one group office we sent questions to each other over IM even though we were literally elbow-to-elbow. In another group office, we talked almost constantly because we each brought specialized, non-intersecting knowledge to the project.

-The team doesn't last forever. When projects or people start to turn over, it's a good idea to re-form the groups.

(edit: list format looked terrible)

I love the productivity boost of sitting with my PM:

"hey, feature x.y.z is actually a pain, now that I look at it closely. Can I email scrap it?"

"scrapped. "

Way better than spending a couple of days working on it before a weekly checkup meeting.

try a daily standup.

Project managers don't typically make such decisions. They ask how X is coming along, and how long Y will take.

The PM might also be the Product Manager. In that case they would indeed be taking those decisions.

This depends a lot of the size of the project and company.

Some teams may work more on a model where they just have to deliver X, where X is some high level business requirement.

In such circumstances it might not be unreasonable for the project manager to make decisions about which particular bells and whistles to include in the version 1 deliverable etc.

And there's no chance you could, instead, just get up and walk to where the PM sits, or call him/her via phone, or use IM, or just send an email, and accomplish the same end?

To me, it sounds like a false dichotomy to say that you either sit together and have rapid communication OR you sit apart and are forced to wait for a weekly checkup meeting... surely there's a continuum there??

If this is a 3-5 person squad, working together with a policy of keeping telephone conversations outside. Then I think that this is the best setup.

As a programmer, I really prefer team rooms. By which I mean one comfortable room with the whole team and exactly the whole team: nobody extra, nobody missing. Plus some nearby space for things like phone calls and meetings, so that work doesn't get disrupted.

The thing I like best about this is that I basically never have to wait for somebody to get back to me. Never having to check or write email for stuff that's more easily accomplished in person is awesome.

  The thing I like best about this is that I basically never 
  have to wait for somebody to get back to me.

But what about the person in the middle of "flow" that you just asked a question?

The person I most often have to talk to is a product person, who are happy to be interrupted most of the time (and when they aren't, they go hide).

When it's another developer, there's an etiquette to it. Because we're in the same room, I generally know when they're focused, and will just wait a bit if it isn't urgent. You also have graduated options for interrupting. There are times when people get my attention just by looking at me, or turning towards me and waiting a moment. If somebody is in flow, they'll probably ignore that.

We also do test-driven development and a fair bit of pair programming, which makes distractions less problematic when they do happen.

Yep, that's why I can't stand this arrangement. Respect others time and workflow by using non-blocking communication like email or IM. They'll answer when it's convenient for them.

I always preferred IM or email to phone or face-to-face for this exact reason. IM and email can be ignored until its convenient to reply, but phone and face-to-face forces you to stop working and respond right away, even if you were right in the middle of something.

The room should be the size of a conference room so everyone has a normal sized desk and room to personalize their space.

Team fit and cohesiveness become pretty critical in this setup. Ideally the team lead should sit with the team or close enough to run interference and provide air cover as needed.

I don't think he meant 3-5 people working in a space the size of a one person office. If that is what he meant, you are right. Otherwise, if the space is big as 5 small offices, it does not sound bad.

You may be right. One of the companies I used to work for was cheap enough to try a stunt like that, so I'm a bit biased when I hear people talking about putting 3-5 people in one room.

Oh yes it does. I probably caused measurable damage to my hearing trying to block out the conversations with headphones+music. It was horrific.

I agree. Even with my nice sound isolating earbuds (Shure), it doesn't block out all the external sounds unless I set the volume higher than I would like.

While playing music on headphones can help block out conversations, it is still a distraction. It's just not as annoying as hearing other people talk.

And they've never invented (to my knowledge) smell-canceling headphones.

I've worked in places where it was an issue. And it's a very difficult one to address. "Please be quieter" is much more socially acceptable than "Please use deodorant".

There are two ways to handle this reasonably gracefully, and a lot of ways that suck.

1. In private, tell the person "I don't think your deodorant is working well enough. Just thought you ought to know."

2. Go to their manager, and have the manager say pretty much the same thing, not mentioning that anyone but the manager noticed anything.

Almost anything else comes off as boorish.

If smell is a problem then you are sitting way too tight.

An open room needs plenty of space.

For me it depends entirely on the type of conversation.

I don't mind if it's done at moderate volume and is relevant to the work at hand. Indeed, I like those kinds of conversation to happen around me; the ambient information lets me have a better feel for how the project is going.

It's only when it's irrelevant or loud that I'd want headphones. So we just kick that kind of conversation out of the team room.

I'm a private office fan myself, but having worked in a team room before, it's actually pretty good so long as it is large enough and the "team" is actually a team.

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