I work in a cubibcleish environment and it can indeed be pretty annonying when some loudmouths blabber in the background when you’re trying to figure out a complex issue in code.

For me, music and test-driven development help keep me concentrated. Just get headphones and play music so loud you don’t hear anything that’s going on around you. TDD on the other hand just simply helps me focus on the problem at hand better.

So true.

Except that to get junior/medior programmers to get to be great programmers they need to be able to ask questions or discuss issues.

So I’m in an office with 2 other programmers and an intern…
Hence my productivity is about 50% of what it could be or what I can do when I’m at home.

@Harro—it depends on how you measure your productivity. Hopefully, your management recognizes that you helping your junior colleagues grow is part of that.

Sounds like someone has read peopleware …..

What if developers work together on the same project? Being in the same room with the team, while costing some productivity caused by distraction, will also gain productivity by being able to brainstorm easily, help each other, pair program, etc. I think every team needs to define for itself how they like to approach this. Also, I’ve had projects where the whole ‘working together on something’ created a flow as well. I don’t think I agree to the fact that an office per developer is always more productive.

@Harro – There are communal areas, reviews and planning meet ups for things like that, also paired coding runs will help …. though for pure focus and getting the job done, being left alone is what is needed.

I agree with Marco. I “invested” a lot of time helping a junior developer grow, and in the end he became good enough to take some of my workload. Initial investment can pay dividends in the end, but when explaining this to management….put everything in dollar amounts.

@Ivo. In very few isolated situations, usually revolving around a botched rollout or some sort of temporary emergency, I will agree that having all the developers in the same room can be a good thing.

Beyond that, no, not ever. I’ve worked in both environments. My very first development job where I was on a team, there were 30+ of us programmers and each one had our own office. I was able to hunker down and concentrate without threat of interruption, intentional or otherwise. I was also able to hold private conversations without fear of interrupting others. I still functioned as part of a team and when I needed mentoring or needed to mentor, we made it happen. But I never had someone next to me on a speaker phone holding a conference call with a client, or any of the other thousands of daily things that have to take place for life to continue.
As Jeremy pointed out, this isn’t a new idea. Demarco and Lister expressed similar thoughts in Peopleware. However, my comments are based on my experience.

It’s not a matter of prestige, it’s a practical matter of productivity. You cannot focus with a lot of activity going on around you. Yes, you cna get work done, yes you can put on headphones and try to ignore the people talking next to you. However, you can’t “get in the zone”, “get your head in the game” or whatever you want to call it while there are distractions going on around you.

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@Ivo – You are assuming that everyone focuses at exactly the same time and that when one is just about to make a break though having two or three next to them “brainstorming” wont break their flow and loose the code, because it will.

Situation rooms are good, giving coders the option of a sanctuary is far better, even if they choose not to use it.

Should of posted this above : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29

Personally when being a part of creating vBulletin we all had our or own environments and met up to discuss, then went back to creation, hence why we could produce something like version 3.0 up to 3.8.

Being in an open plan office now, I know I’m running around 10-15% of what I can do due to constant interruptions, and I really miss the environment to be able to churn it out when in flow.

Looking for a job to get back to that reminds me of the Start Trec episode where Terrence Stamp is playing a character trying to get back into the ribbon, or what ever it was !

I do have to wonder whether a single office per developer will reduce the team mentality often required for a successful project?

When everyone is isolated in their own rooms, it will reduce the amount of communication happening between developers – especially if you don’t go to the break room for coffee and sit on your PC like I do =)

@Jeremy: it was Malcolm McDowell in Start Trek Generations 🙂
ExtremeProgramming proposes to use a open work space to improve communication in the team. At least they would be pair programming, so both of them should get distracted to interrupt the flow.

More important than offices is 2 or 3 large monitors (and fast computer with lots of memory).

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In my work we had a large hall where 19 programmers shared the same space, obviously the place was quite uncomfortable for a developer.

Thanks to this article i was able to convince my bosses to split this developers area into a small offices, not one box for each programmer but a small number of developer for each office(4 to 6 developers on each one).

Now we have a nice place to work, we are very happy and comfortable in our places. Tanks Cal for this the excelente post, was very helpful for us.