Hacker News Reader

Comment by idkMaybeImonly1 | Hacker News Reader

I used to think like you guys, how the fuck would I get any work done if I'm in the middle with so many people doing so many different things in the same time. Someone is narrating his/her life story, other one talking about his views on x and so on. However, after working on similar environment for a year and now working on a really private cubes. I prefer the open spaces, it's more fun. YOU CANNOT SLACK IN OPEN SPACES. I used only code code code whole day and now in a private cube I spent hours on HN, reddit and 2/3 hrs for work. Yes, the company is fine but I don't feel I'm producing as much as I can. Why? Because I can slack in private cubes unlike in open spaces where I want to prove among these peoples.

edit: Sorry for bad English. I cannot slack in open spaces, that's why I like them.

View on HN

I work in a large open space but often I'm the only one there. I find that the amount of time I spend slacking depends more on the nature of my work and on my personal condition than on wheter there are other people around.

When I'm tired and I have lots of dreadfully boring things to do, I end up reading HN. When I have a challenging task, and I'm well rested, I get into the zone and everything around me fades away and I'm really productive. The surrounding (people or no people) seems less important.

Slack should be handled by effective management. Having clearly defined deadlines and checkups on progress prevents people from wasting time in a detrimental way. Instilling fear in your devs by threatening to expose them when they goof off is not how you should treat professionals.

So I goof off. Perhaps I don't even work for an entire day. Am I meeting the schedule laid out for me? Am I producing as much as expected while being happy and carefully managing my output?

Forcing engineers to work nonstop is a good way to create buggy software.

There needs to be a shift in the industry to respecting what people get done rather than how many hours they spent working on it.

So which one is it? Do you slack more, or less, in private space?

I personally find open space distracting. When I'm separated, I do browse a lot of HN and stuff - but at some point I eventually concentrate, gain speed, and start getting the work done. Not so in open-space; there I find it hard to do anything else than read HN or talk on IRC. Partly because I find the presence of other people unnerving and annoying when I'm working.

I'm the exact same way you are. I get more work done in the couple of hours per day that I'm at work before the rest of the team than I do the rest of the time.

> YOU CANNOT SLACK IN OPEN SPACES.

You're not trying hard enough.

Believe me you can.

In my last workplace I used to have the occasional unproductive day, spending more time than was reasonable on facebook and the internet. Toward the end of the day I would start to feel guilty about it. Then I looked around. There were some serious slackers in my previous workplace. I would occasionally finger a couple of peoples terminal sessions, and right enough they hadn't touched a terminal in 3 hours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com