Break Points
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resistion
I don't know if a boss would appreciate these privacy shields when he/she needs ...
tomkawal
Cubicle madness
Jack Ganssle
9/18/2010 4:46 PM EDT
For my money the most important work on software productivity in the last 20 years is DeMarco and Lister's Peopleware. For a decade the authors conducted coding wars at a number of different companies, pitting teams against each other on a standard set of software problems.
The results showed that, using any measure of performance (speed, defects, etc.) the average of those in the 1st quartile outperformed the average in the 4th quartile by nearly a factor of 3.
Surprisingly, none of the factors you'd expect to matter correlated to the best and worst performers. Even experience mattered little, as long as the programmers had been working for at least 6 months.
They did find a very strong correlation between the office environment and team performance. Needless interruptions yielded poor performance. The best teams had private (read "quiet") offices and phones with "off" switches. Their study suggests that quiet time saves vast amounts of money.
Think about this. The almost minor tweak of getting some quiet time can, according to their data, multiply your productivity by 3x! That's an astonishing result. For the same salary your boss pays you now, he'd get essentially 3 of you.
Too many of us work in a sea of cubicles, despite the clear showing how ineffective they are. It's bad enough that there's no door and no privacy. Worse is when we're subjected to the phone calls of all of our neighbors.
We hear the whispered agony as the poor sod in the cube next door tries to work it out with his spouse. We try to focus on our work... but being human the pathos of the drama grabs our attention till we're straining to hear the latest development. Is this an efficient use of an expensive person's time?
Later studies by other researchers found that after an interruption it takes 15 minutes to get into a state of “flow,” that Spock-like trance where you’re one with the computer. Yet the average developer gets interrupted every 11 minutes.
Yet the cube police will rarely listen to data and reason. They've invested in the cubes, and they've made a decision, By God! The cubicles are here to stay!
This is a case where we can only wage a defensive action. Educate your boss but resign yourself to failure. In the meantime, take some action to minimize the downside of the environment. Here are a few ideas:
* Wear headphones and listen to music to drown out the divorce saga next door.
* Turn the phone off. If it has no "off" switch, unplug the damn thing. In desperate situations attack the wire with a pair of wire cutters. Remember that a phone is a bell that anyone in the world can ring to bring you running. Conquer this madness for your most productive hours.
* Know your most productive hours. I work best before lunch; that's when I schedule all of my creative work, all of the hard stuff. I leave the afternoons free for low-IQ activities like meetings, phone calls, and paperwork.
* Disable the email. It's worse than the phone. Your two hundred closest friends who send the joke of the day are surely a delight, but if you respond to the email reader's "bing" you're little more than one of NASA's monkeys pressing a button to get a banana.
* Put a curtain across the opening to simulate a poor man's door. Be sure others understand that when it's closed you are not willing to hear from anyone unless it's an emergency.
The ultimate irony of cubicles is that shortly before he died in 2000, Robert Propst railed against cubes, calling them “monolithic insanity.” (Robert Propst invented the Action Office, which was eventually perverted into the cubicle.)
Jack G. Ganssle is a lecturer and consultant on embedded development issues. He conducts seminars on embedded systems and helps companies with their embedded challenges. Contact him at jack@ganssle.com. His website is www.ganssle.com.
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NevadaDave
9/20/2010 10:54 AM EDT
Jack,
Having read this article before, and being very much in sympathy with what you've written, I find that recently my opinion has changed somewhat. I work from a "remote" location that is 3 hours behind the main office and other facilities back east. 'Phone and email are my only means of communicating with my coworkers & supervisor. It is enormously frustrating to call someone, get voicemail, then have to wait several hours or days before getting an answer back. I will often send emails at the end of my workday with questions about issues that need quick resolution, and then not get an answer back for an entire day, or even worse, not get an answer at all, prompting another email from me. Somewhere, we have to have to be able to compromise on this issue. I don't get (and I'm assuming that others don't get)a lot of spam, as our corporate firewall filters out a load of junk. There's very little "fluff" emails between me and other workers, so if an email from any of us pops up on the screen, it's virtually always for a good reason. I certainly understand the need for quiet (which is one of the reasons I like working from home) but we also have to cooperate to get the projects done, and that often requires more timely communication.
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tfc
9/21/2010 8:13 PM EDT
Alas, for years, we have listened time after time on what companies should do to increase productivity (or not reduce productivity) and management does not listen because, as we all know, management is the solution and not the problem. We could take the Peopleware book and grind manager’s faces in to the pages ad nauseum and they would still go frowardly out into the world flat-faced and not change a thing. How many times have we heard engineers say,“I do my best work at night” meaning when everyone goes away and leaves me alone? The productivity is amazing when an engineer can relax and concentrate on problems on the computer and not the ones that walk in the door to ask questions mainly for their benefit and not yours. This 3X increase in productivity is so great that even the most recalcitrant manager should have figured it out, but as the article says, engineers are interrupted every 11 minutes and listen to office noise around them. Thousands of years ago, it was written, “A watched servant has many bruises”
As for cubicles, I am reminded of the story of a mad German prince who had a bed that would fit everyone no matter how short or tall. If a shoe company manager said that to save money, everyone would be given size 6 shoes and the higher your position, the larger your shoes will become, would people say that makes sense? For some reason managers believe all workers can do their different jobs in the same sized cubical. As an embedded engineer I have worked for one company that had me doing several embedded projects on half a desk and another company where I had one project on several desks. Guess at which company the bosses were happier with my progress? Just as strange, how many times have we seen sales/managers having newer computers with larger screens while development engineers work on the oldest hand me down with 14” CRTs?
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tfc
9/21/2010 8:13 PM EDT
Doing one better than coworkers whimpering nearby is sales representatives confidently talking on the phone to customers about the product you are working on and mentions several new capabilities and features that were not discussed at design meetings. Try to concentrate on your project while THAT is happening. I have used headphones to drown out sales or managers conversations only to have managers or “coworkers” walk up behind you and conclude you are having a party. If I had put a curtain across the opening to simulate a poor man's door, managers would check up on me, even more.
To be facetious, after giving the “word to the wise”, I think we should give these managers exactly what they want to the point that even these obtuse managers will finally realize their folly, or the company goes bankrupt. Far too many times I have seen honest workers do the right thing when these managers are not around to save the company from itself only to be crucified for not following instructions, but not change the worker’s results back to what management originally wanted. Either way, the outcome will be a better workplace.
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ddaly
9/21/2010 11:53 PM EDT
Five years ago, when Jack talked about iPods for the masses, I weighed in on this theme:
http://www.eetimes.com/discussion/embedded-pulse/4025061/iPods-for-the-masses
I haven't changed the way I feel. If the bean counters want to go cheap-cheap-cheap, then don't waste money on cube walls.
Being able to see all the way across the room, one can tell immediately if a coworker is not present, available, or not to be bothered, and can ascertain that without making a sound.
Managers ought to find it appealing because everyone's work and conduct is out in plain sight all the time. Under those circumstances, I think most engineers would come to find their superiors looking on them less, not more.
Such an arrangement may make engineers shudder as much as the prospect of many of his or her works might make a manager's stomach turn. Sure, it's an adjustment and requires buy-in and discipline on the part of everyone on the team, but if given the choice between cube walls and an open, "newsroom" environment (an office with a door and a window not being an option), my choice remains clear: Mr. Manager, tear down that wall!
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Luis Sanchez
10/21/2010 8:12 PM EDT
interesting stuff.
I once read that at google, no walls exist.
That might increase productivity in teams,
The noise really bothers me I'm gonna get me a pair of headsets. Really noise isolating ones.
and a curtain... that's a joke right :-)?
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Rich Krajewski
10/22/2010 1:28 AM EDT
I've been working from home for over a decade. My biggest distraction is getting "funny" e-mails from colleagues back in the office. I think of that every time I hear someone say "team player."
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tomkawal
11/18/2011 6:49 AM EST
I find tearing down the walls very disturbing,
Don't need to tear the wall - if one can place glass panels to see through!
Any idea of threating everyone the same with cubicle is insane!
One disciplined at work, able to work alone, when need to concentrate, should get his room to allow boost of productivity.
Generally, people cannot work isolated, but
at least each team or project should have own room. The character of work and individual employee character is a clue.
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resistion
11/18/2011 7:30 AM EST
I don't know if a boss would appreciate these privacy shields when he/she needs to get through.
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