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Comment by credo | Hacker News Reader

The title is eye-catching and the writer has a good writing style, but I see a lot of problems with the headline as well as the content

- Microsoft's private offices were an innovation in the 80s/90s, cramming large numbers of worker bees into a single large office is a retrogressive step, not a 21st century innovation

- The writers focus is on Visual Studio, but a number of other teams had switched to agile much earlier. I worked in Windows Live Mobile in when we switched to "agile" in 2004. This wasn't being dragged into anything, it was a relatively early adoption

- Software projects do often get delayed, but not always. I was one of the dev-leads who worked on Office XP in the 90s and though we had a long ~3year, ship cycle, we did ship on the original planned shipped date (RTM 3/2/1) Steven Sinofsky deserved a lot of credit for that.

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>I worked in Windows Live Mobile in when we switched to "agile" in 2004. This wasn't being dragged into anything, it was a relatively early adoption

What kind of "agile" were you practicing? I don't know about "Windows Live Mobile", but until recently the remnants of Windows Live were pretty much all in a waterfall-esque model: Multi-month milestones with 6-8 weeks each of planning, coding, and stabilization. This was better than 3-year cycles, but I would hardly call it agile. I guess on the full spectrum it's more agile.

no one likes the open floors. yet, the articles and scrum proponents keep talking as if open floors.

I suppose somebody, somewhere, prefers them. I'd like to see hard numbers for/against though. I suspect it's more a way to justify a decision someone else has already made for their own reasons.

I'm curious about the common belief that private offices are better. Here's an article that suggests private offices might not be better. Do the two ideas fit together or do you just not believe the article (I didn't see any research sited)

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/working-...

There's plenty of research that shows that open floor plans always hurt morale and productivity. You're not looking hard enough.

FWIW, I’ve read of ton of research and the consensus is that open floor plans do hurt morale/individual production, but private offices hurt communication/team production.

I’ve also seen some research (which I cannot recall right this second) - which suggests team offices of 4-8 are ideal where you get some of the communication/team productivity without the full disruption of an open office.

We have (some) private offices, but the people in them stay connected online using a collaboration tool. They are aware of the entire team's activities and can communicate instantly with anyone with a question or issue, yet distractions are minimized by being in a quiet personal space.

Our tool of choice is Sococo, because its awesome and because we develop it (I work at Sococo).

I have a list of about 10 articles (with verified sources, etc) that go in either direction. Making a bold claim that one type of office is more productive than another is simply untrue.

I made no such claim. I was making the claim that overall production maybe affected differently than individual production for both scenarios. And offering a middle-ground option which may be more beneficial, but is often not discussed.

I would stab someone for a private office.

Getting interrupted every 15 minutes while trying to get my head wrapped around some difficult bug fixes makes work virtually impossible.

For every startup I've had, I do all my work from home in my own office. Once a day meetings to go over issues, strategy, etc. makes my days exponentially more productive.

Sometimes developers need to collaborate and sometimes they need quiet isolation. Individual developers have preferences too. (Sometimes I like a bustle around me. It keeps me from zoning out.) This false dichotomy of exclusively committing to one or the other is foolish.

With notebook computers and mobile phones, there is no reason to chain an employee to their desk. A software company could have areas with open tables and school desks designated for a particular working environment. It would require some sound proofed rooms meant for demos and discussions, and at least one large area you could call "The Library" where talking is met with a chorus of angry shushing.

This is just an idea that’s been rattling around my head so I am sure there are points to work out in implementation, but I doubt it would cost significantly more or hurt productivity any worse than open office plans.

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