| Ye gods, another open floor plan rant. Never see enough of these any more. Instead of point-by-point, I'm just going to offer one critique. "...Programming is a very brain-intensive task..." Sure thing, buddy. But guess what? You're not a machine for cranking out little bits and bytes. Instead, you're part of a team that's trying to provide value to a user. That means that most of your job, whether you like this or not, is human in nature. The computer part should just be a "gimme". The physical space around a team should represent the mental space of the team. One hundred guys in a big cafeteria? Not so much. 40 guys in clusters of 3-6 with rolling whiteboards and allowances for breakout discussions? Much different. There are things I would love in software development. I would love to sit on the beach fanning myself coding while money is deposited in my account. (Actually, I've done that.) I would love to work alone in my office in the wee hours of the morning in an awesome state of flow (did that many times too.) But at some point you have to separate "things I want to do" from "things that optimize the value I provide". They aren't the same thing. I'm all for private offices if it works for you and optimizes value. Same goes for distributed teams. Right now nobody has all the answers. On average, though, it looks like these things are counter-productive for projects that require creative new ways of thinking of things. I wish it weren't so, but it is. |