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Staring at code 8 hours a day.. Maybe that's the problem.

As someone who's had to run programming groups and do the programming work, I will say open floor plans are the worst idea ever.

If you need/want to get into the zone on a project and actually make progress, the open floor plan will keep you from doing that as much as possible. For breaks, the last thing I would be doing is going on facebook or checking email or doing other useless crap like that.

Your job sounds horrible if people can just walk up any time for any reason. And if you're spending time looking at cat gif's then I think you or your manager needs to revisit how you're spending your time. Doesn't sound like work to me. Sorry...

You sound like a really angry person. What do you do on your breaks? And you really think checking emails is useless? Honestly, if the OP is checking his emails on his breaks, he actually sounds like he's being productive. OP also clearly said he looked at cat gifs to clear his head. If you cannot understand the need for a programmer to clear their head from time to time, then you are not a programmer and if you did manage programmers, you were awful at it.

The points you are attempting to make can probably be made in a more mature and respectful manner. Just because someone's opinion differs than yours doesn't mean they are an "angry person" or "awful" at what they do.

>Your job sounds horrible if people can just walk up any time for any reason.

I think this speaks more to what you think about your coworkers than actually weighing in on open floor plans.

I adore my coworkers, I agree with the post you're replying to. An environment that encourages random "walk up" interruptions is a terrible environment in many ways. With an office with a door it's easy enough to shut the door to indicate "I need to be left alone now" and open the door when you're in an "it's OK to interrupt me" frame.

They did not say "encourages random walkups" - the tone and context makes it seem pretty clear that they do not want to be approachable to their coworkers.

"occasional spontaneous fun interruptions"

I would prefer to choose when to have my interruptions.

Then it's not spontaneous. Hell, if you choose it it's not even an interruption.

I'm probably a borderline ADD. My mind interrupts me constantly with spontaneus and needy impulses.

"A factory pattern, you say? Well.. Oh, look, a squirrel!"

Or, at least not have to listen to the guys one pod over "spontaneously" discussing last night's sports statistics for a half hour block on the daily. Perhaps they're "doing it wrong" but they have their right to "spontaneous fun" things too. We're all adults and only have so much say, even one's manager. All it takes is one conflict and the concept eats itself alive.

> I absolutely love being in an open office layout because it allows for easy collaboration

For collaboration nothing beats an open office layout. But collaborative periods make up a very small amount of our [developers] time.

If we spent most of our time collaborating then maybe open office layouts would make some sense (though maybe not, since there's still downsides to consider). It is illogical to choose an office layout based on what you spend a small fraction of your time doing.

Whoever down-voted your comment should have that privilege revoked. trose's comment was completely on topic and well thought out. Down-voting is not to be used when you simply disagree.

Downvoting is for however the user wants to use it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

> pg 2455 days ago | link | parent | flag

> I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

> It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

This is a pretty big tangent, but I fairly strongly disagree with pg on this.

The fact that upvotes and downvotes are not treated symmetrically seems to imply that they really aren't suitable for merely conveying agreement or disagreement. Somebody's comment shouldn't literally be greyed out, sometimes to the point of being illegible, because a few people disagreed with it. This combination -- using downvotes freely to express disagreement, and hiding or fading out downvoted comments -- is a recipe for groupthink. It's very nearly a form of censoring comments that are maybe contentious but in no way inflammatory or off-topic or poorly written.

Meh. Maybe if you think Paul Graham is a god.