[zepto]

> but even if you believe you’d be more productive in a private office, you’re not going to be 15-30% more productive.

15-30% is probably low for quite a few individuals. It could be as much as 2-3x. I have experimented with it and it certainly is for me.

The problem is that on average you may be right, since there are also a lot of people who barely benefit from it.

[sokoloff]

Do you think it’s 2-3x averaged for the entire year?

I’m way more effective at writing complex code in an office. I’m not any more effective at random administrative tasks (due to procrastination tendencies, I might even be less effective at them). I’m modestly more effective at reading emails or design docs, but not integer factors more productive.

I’m a huge supporter of offices and was extremely salty when we got kicked out of them (for cost reasons). It’s why I love remote working now.

[cyphertruck]

The 2-3X factor includes the lower return from administrative tasks. For code writing it is probably 10X - 15X.

[himinlomax]

It's not that people are more productive with private offices, it's that some (many) people are extremely unproductive with open floor plans. So that 2-3x figure is realistic, no matter how you average it.

[AmericanChopper]

The problem with extraordinary claims like this, is that you’re much more likely to be estimating your own productivity incorrectly than you are to be correctly. There’s no doubt that most people would write more LoCs sitting a in quiet room undisturbed, but that’s likely a rather poor measurement of your ability to productively provide value to your employer.

I worked with a guy recently who was a notoriously poor communicator. He’d spend 4 days/week WFH, would barely give any updates on what he was doing, and was in general incredibly hard to get a hold of. He did write a lot of code, and most of it was very high quality. But almost none of it was ever used. His excellent code would almost never end up solving the problems we needed it to solve, or provide the functionality we needed it to provide, and nobody ever learned anything from working with him and his very senior-level skill set.

In my experience, people who make extraordinary estimates about how much more productive they’d be if left to work on problems alone are much more likely to be similar to that guy rather than the person you’re describing. This person was a rather extreme case, but I’ve worked with plenty of people like him.

[zepto]

> The problem with extraordinary claims like this, is that you’re much more likely to be estimating your own productivity incorrectly than you are to be correctly. There’s no doubt that most people would write more LoCs sitting a in quiet room undisturbed, but that’s likely a rather poor metric of your ability to productively provide value to your employer.

It’s not an extraordinarily claim. You are making assumptions you have no insight into.

> In my experience, people who make extraordinary estimates about how much more productive they’d be if left to work on problems alone are much more likely to be similar to that guy rather than the person you’re describing.

This is an extraordinary claim.

You are making the generalization that the large majority of people who have high productivity gains when working in a private office are poor communicators who don’t contribute usefully.

The extraordinary claim is that your experience has given you access to the large number of people, their productivity, and their work habits to understand this phenomenon objectively.

If you are a researcher who has done field work and published papers in this field, please feel free to link to one.

If not, what you are saying seems like bullshit.

[Veen]

But people are notoriously terrible at estimating their own productivity and how they spend their time. Almost everyone I know who has tried time tracking and life logging is shocked at how different reality is from their expectations (mostly that they do less and work less than they think).

[zepto]

> But people are notoriously terrible at estimating their own productivity and how they spend their time.

That’s true.

> Almost everyone I know who has tried time tracking and life logging is shocked at how different their expectations are from the reality (mostly that they do less and work less than they think).

Right, and time tracking and life logging are now widespread practices, so people who do these things can do a pretty good job of estimating their productivity. Also we have things like the Pomodoro method, commit histories, etc. to give indications.

I completely agree that guessing your own productivity difference without doing anything to measure it will not yield good data.

Now look at what the GP is doing - they are using an anecdote of one person’s productivity to make a claim about the productivity of a wide range of people.

My point is that their experience is very unlikely to give them the data and insight needed to make such a generalization because they aren’t measuring anyone’s productivity - they are just using an anecdote.

[cyphertruck]

True but irrelevant to the fact that this guy is rationalizing the reduction in performance (as independently measured by researchers) by ~%70 in favor of reducing costs %~%15.

And then he blames the victim and you fell for it.

[Veen]

I didn't fall for anything. And, quite frankly, I have only an academic interest in the topic. I haven't set foot in an office as an employee for twenty years. I work from home as a freelance contractor. I'd immediately quit any job that did try to make me work in an office.

[lucumo]

GP explicitly states that it is their experience. They do not need a peer reviewed paper to describe their experience. That's ridiculous.

[zepto]

> GP explicitly states that it is their experience.

GP states that their experience gives them enough insight into other people’s productivity to make a detailed assessment.

> They do not need a peer reviewed paper to describe their experience.

They aren’t describing their experience. That’s the point. They are adding the words ‘in my experience’ to a generalization that they almost certainly don’t have the experience to make.

What would make their claim plausible would be if they were a researcher.

> That's ridiculous.

No it isn’t.

[cyphertruck]

I love it, you dismiss long established, well researched logical conclusions based on understanding of software development and backed by studies…in favor of your anecdote about an engineer you failed to manage properly.

In my experience people who make extraordinary claims about how bad the “guru” employee is are just ignoring his actual contributions because he is focused on getting things done rather than shouting “yes sir” to their arbitrary and clueless demands.

Worse they think this anecdote justifies destroying the productivity of the entire company.

And yet here you are repeating this exact cliche.

It is still not logical.

[AmericanChopper]

Where is this study you keep mentioning that shows a private office will provide a 2-3x boost to productivity? We both know this doesn’t exist.

Do you really think your corporate overlords could get the same productivity from 1/3rd the payroll, but choose not to because they’d rather torture you with an open-plan office?

Who’s more likely to be wrong about this? You, or the majority of businesses in the world?

(Also, I didn’t manage that person I was talking about. Him and I were both managed by the same person, and she was one of the most compassionate and patient managers I’ve ever worked with).

[_y5hn]

How about 3,5 (72%) less time having face-to-face interactions with each other in the open-plan office:

https://www.managers.org.uk/knowledge-and-insights/article/t...

Would it kill you to just do a search?

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=research+productivity+open+pl...

[AmericanChopper]

As interesting as that is, it is not a measurement of productivity.

I did suspect that’s the only piece of data that “2-3x” person keeps posting about all over this thread though.

[_y5hn]

Added other post now. It's good to be curious, and asking questions.

I don't say that you are, and online person could be anyone saying anything (ie. to troll). For educational purposes, test can be tried to learn about oneself: https://www.idrlabs.com/psychopathy/test.php

I scored 1.5% less than average.

[_y5hn]

In your first post above, you claim open office doesn't work for you, since you need confidential meetings and then would need to be away from open plan anyway. This is asinine reasoning, as your phoning and meetings would disrupt everybody around you doing knowledge work. If it's not you, then it's all the other people. With open plan, there's in fact less collaboration, as there's less space. Even pairing makes too much noise. This, while gossiping and all the other distractions are much worse than in an office. So it's a failure on all accounts, which research do confirm.

This second post is a bit unfairly judged. We all know LoC don't matter. In fact, your point of someone doing irrelevant work is spot on. You know what would help? Actual technical leadership, being included, having a say and a tight feedback loop.

That would require actually seeing people, collaboration and building an organization. Exactly the opposite of the past 20 years tear-down of workplace culture.