<story><title>Updating classic workplace sabotage techniques</title><url>http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/05/updating-a-classic.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Baghard</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&amp;#x2F;~robins&amp;#x2F;YouAndYourResearch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&amp;#x2F;~robins&amp;#x2F;YouAndYourResearch.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don&amp;#x27;t know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.&amp;#x27;&amp;#x27; I don&amp;#x27;t know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.&lt;/i&gt; -- Richard Hamming</text></item><item><author>thedevil</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a career changer from actuary to software developer. The most shocking part of the career change was open office arrangements.&lt;p&gt;Both careers are technical and require both concentration and collaboration.  Actuaries tend to have their own cubicles (offices for mid-level and higher).&lt;p&gt;Software developers require much more concentration. So I just assumed that the virtually all software developers would have their own offices because a solo cubicle seemed inadequate for most developer jobs.  And of course, who would be dumb enough to use open office for developers? ... well, I got a little surprise.&lt;p&gt;Everyone tries to undo the damage of a bad floor design with expensive headphones, but it&amp;#x27;s just not adequate.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nnq</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s slightly amusing that everyone seem to miss the huge difference between:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    A. Individual office with open door
    B. Open plan office
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I&amp;#x27;d imagine the ideal would be individual offices with no doors:&lt;p&gt;This would create a good enough sense of intimacy and would be obvious to people that when they pass the space of you non-existing door they are entering &lt;i&gt;your space&lt;/i&gt; so they should have &lt;i&gt;a reason to do it and you acceptance.&lt;/i&gt; And of course, having an actual &lt;i&gt;separate&lt;/i&gt; ceiling atop your office is important - the visual part matters, we need the feeling of &amp;quot;private cave&amp;quot; even if we agree to share it most of the time. And open space above only brings anxiety and makes you feel that you are in an open savannah and a predator can jump at you from behind the bushes anytime.&lt;p&gt;But of course, we live in a &lt;i&gt;plentiful&lt;/i&gt; age, &lt;i&gt;obsessed with efficiency&lt;/i&gt; (oh, the bitter irony of the contradiction...), so all that &lt;i&gt;wasted space&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;extra paid on rent&lt;/i&gt; because open-office spaces are probably cheaper is a no-no...</text></comment>
<story><title>Updating classic workplace sabotage techniques</title><url>http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/05/updating-a-classic.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Baghard</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&amp;#x2F;~robins&amp;#x2F;YouAndYourResearch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&amp;#x2F;~robins&amp;#x2F;YouAndYourResearch.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don&amp;#x27;t know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.&amp;#x27;&amp;#x27; I don&amp;#x27;t know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.&lt;/i&gt; -- Richard Hamming</text></item><item><author>thedevil</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a career changer from actuary to software developer. The most shocking part of the career change was open office arrangements.&lt;p&gt;Both careers are technical and require both concentration and collaboration.  Actuaries tend to have their own cubicles (offices for mid-level and higher).&lt;p&gt;Software developers require much more concentration. So I just assumed that the virtually all software developers would have their own offices because a solo cubicle seemed inadequate for most developer jobs.  And of course, who would be dumb enough to use open office for developers? ... well, I got a little surprise.&lt;p&gt;Everyone tries to undo the damage of a bad floor design with expensive headphones, but it&amp;#x27;s just not adequate.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>arvinjoar</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been thinking about that quote from time to time for a while now, and what strikes me is that his generalization does sound very plausible, but we have to remember that his experience is from a very specific context. To me it seems like having an open door at Los Alamos or Bell Labs back then, is akin to hanging around HN, certain IRC&amp;#x2F;Slack channels, and so on, today. At least for the vast majority of us, who wouldn&amp;#x27;t be exposed to such bright people otherwise.&lt;p&gt;Although I wouldn&amp;#x27;t count myself as successful by any metric, I still think I&amp;#x27;ve picked up a lot of interesting and useful stuff though osmosis, stuff that a lot of people not exposed to the same things only realize a few years later when it hits the mainstream and becomes part of the zeitgeist of Western culture (and so much else that never hits a more general audience but still holds promise within their respective niches if one can connect the dots).</text></comment>