Hacker News Reader

Comment by rilita | Hacker News Reader

Generally software developers at any level are treated as the lowest level of person at companies, even when the company specializes in software. As a result, they are packed in wherever they fit.

The theory seems that developers benefit from feeling like a frathouse of some sort, where they play in most of their area, but otherwise cram together to study for a bit, so that they can go back to goofing off afterwards.

Developers are not treated as professionals. They are treated as animals; herded together to make them work, but otherwise just giving them big grassy fields.

View on HN

My first reaction was that this was a bit over the top, but... on reflection, not really. Fog Creek's setup looks nice, but outside of that, I've rarely seen any company treat their developers like they treat their marketing folks, legal, financial and other areas. Financial/accountants aren't generally expected to sit in an open room with 15 other people with foosball games going on in their line of site.

Should we encourage "pair accounting" and have accountants share a laptop screen to get their work done?

There's an element of mentoring and support that can go on in those open environments - adhoc help, etc - but that seems to be partially a cover for the fact that many people aren't all that good at what they do, and the better people need to help train (sorry, "lead") the less experienced folk.

My own experience in open plans, beyond the general noise, is that it's harder for people to admit they have a question, because it's visible to an entire group. Likewise, it's harder to call someone out for not pulling their weight in an open plan setting, without calling more attention to the interaction.

"private by default" seems to work well for OO developers, just not when it comes to their office space.

> Should we encourage "pair accounting" and have accountants share a laptop screen to get their work done?

Have you ever seen finance people work? That happens all of the time.

Most "finance people" are indeed the very definition of clerical work.

Are the certified professional accountants treated the same way?

Well usually the ratio is something like 1 finance|accounting|hr|legal:50 general employees at a company after a certain size. The 8 people in accounting/finance/hr for a 250 person company has a closed office mostly because of the frequently sensitive conversations and the need to file papers that need to be locked but accessed frequently?

Other departments like marketing that don't have a team office nearly as much.

Im with King, have you ever seen how the Big 4 accounting firms treat their employees? The TL;DR is they pack em in as tight as they can.

http://www.examiner.com/article/pwc-deloitte-e-y-and-kpmg-bi...

I'm not sure why you'd assume that pair programming and private space are mutually exclusive.

> Fog Creek's setup looks nice, but outside of that, I've rarely seen any company treat their developers like they treat their marketing folks, legal, financial and other areas.

I think a big distinguishing factor here is whether software is the company's primary product or not. At Adobe back in the days it was being run by (founder) John Warnock, there was very much an attitude that the developers were the company's bread and butter, and they were treated well. Junior developers often had private offices to themselves. Same went for Microsoft back then.

Most other types of companies see software developers as overhead and treat them accordingly.

Developers are lowest level? You're not seeing what's really going on. What about janitors and security guards and kitchen staff?

Janitors and security guards aren't usually employed by the company, are they?

Yes, and that's one reason they have lower status. But they are still people who work at your job site.

Sure, but rilita's original claim was "at companies", not at job sites. Your sense of indignation is a bit unwarranted given how loosely you're reading the post.

What makes you think from an organizational perspective that there is a difference between them? It is far more likely that the engineers are viewed as having similar fungibility as the janitors than management is viewed as having similar fungibility (for example).

That's overlooking some rather obvious differences in status. Employee versus contractor for one.

What I'm saying is that developers typically don't have their own hierarchy. Sometimes there is a "lead developer", but usually there is a non technical person over top a group of developers, and that person is given an office and more respect.

It has been shown time and again that open floor plans actually harm developer productivity more than they help it. Imo the most reasonable mid ground is giving developers larger cubes big enough to allow pair programming when desired. High cube walls are necessary also so that conversations within a cube don't make it impossible for nearby desks to concentrate.

I've worked at 3 companies and it's never been like this. If anything I've noticed developers are afforded more freedom, flexibility, and respect. I really have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't know if I agree. At the companies I've been in developers are treated like gods. Sure, we've been sitting in open office plans but so has the management.

I find most of your comment to be spot-on, but I personally believe a bit of "feeling like a frathouse of some sort" is conductive to creative work.

I agree that it enhances creativity, so it may be a match for a gaming company, especially when the game itself is targeted at a college demographic, but I don't think it is good for developing corporate systems.

In this sense, it may be the best fit for places such as twitter and facebook... their target demographic is not business people.

For myself, I think all software should be made in the most professional way possible, and I don't think goofing around is conducive to that.

That said, there is a large push to draw in lots of new junior level developers to get stuff done, and a belief that you don't need more than 1 or 2 engineers with 5 years of experience. My objection is that skilled engineers with 5+ years of experience continue to get treated the same way even as they mature and become able to be leaders.

Developers aren't treated like professionals because most of them don't act like professionals.

it's a bit of a feeding cycle. When you're not treated as one, and it's not expected, you don't act like one. When there's a group, if they all want to act non-professionally, the one person who wants to is overruled or ostracized because they don't "fit in".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com