[ig1]

Using a study of programmers in the 1970s (where not punching the wrong hole in punch cards was a critical skill) for programmers in 2017 may not give you the most useful data.

[kps]

Point of order: a punch card environment would have typists do the actual keypunching. Programmers wrote on paper coding forms by hand.

Of course writing out programs by hand is also a long obsolete and useless skill — except for interviews at all the top companies, where it's vital.

[opo]

Is there any study that shows that adding distractions to people and removing personal privacy makes them more productive and/or lowers stress hormones?

For example:

>...In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction.

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-t...

[spcelzrd]

Makes you wonder why more companies don't measure these things. Google and Facebook A/B test button colors, but can't be bothered to measure programmer productivity in any scientific way.

[disgruntledphd2]

To be fair, its not easy. You would need:

- Some kind of informed consent (because quitting)

- Separation of space (to prevent jealousy)

- A good way to measure programmer skill (this one's harder)

- A lack of unquestioned dogma that open plan is better

It's not as easy as you make it out to be, but either big G or Fbook could probably do it, given the will (which i suspect is the actual problem).

EDIT: parentheses are hard to match