Open Office Is Giving You Secondhand ADHD

The VP Eng would always say "I always try to remember it costs the company over a hundred dollars for me open one of these doors."

I learned so much from that boss.

Just say "distraction."

In my company, one problem is that developers produce internal tools that do not correspond to what other employees need. It is even worse when developers are more distant from the users and don't socialize with them.

The "creativity" can increase, it does not mean that it is a good thing if they invent things that are not what people need.

How do they measure that?

However, sometimes I need to talk, design or pair-program. For that I enjoy the office.

(Not to say that focus time isn't important - but its not one or the other.)

A solution (given that management and the team at large understands how this situation is a problem) is to combine the open office with some deep work rooms or if there are no rooms, sound proof pods (eg. from Framery)

I'm in my mid 30's so this industry is all I've ever known, but if it ever shifts such that the expectation of being in an office is something I'd have to deal with, I'd literally change careers.

But yeah, the core issue here isn't really the office, it's attention and concentration. I recently read James Clear's Atomic Habits and am now about halfway through Cal Newport's Deep Work.

I think all developers should read these two books in order to gain an understanding of the psychology of concentration. The TLDR is simply that it's hard to stay focused, minor distractions cost you more productivity than you think, and the effect is even cumulative over long periods of time.

There's lots of research on the topic and there are many ways to address the problem. They all fundamentally relate to carving out time for working without distractions, as much and as routinely as possible.

No one comes near me unless absolutely necessary

Maybe if you have a ton of distractions at the office, your current tasks frequently need intense focus, and you can actually get work done at home without talking to people directly, then you'd be better at home. That's not true for everybody everywhere all the time. If we're generalizing from one sample, then I for one actually don't have a ton of distractions at my open plan office, and I love to be able to talk to my coworkers once in a while. I don't usually get more work done or even enjoy doing it more at home, except in some rare scenarios. I still dislike the open plan office, but this isn't why. And the alternative I find better is an actual shared room office (where the supposed "threats" are presumably still there?), not being at home.

The people in charge want you to idle chat more and churn out work less. Why fight it.

Now tell me you have "second hand ADHD".

I get bored working alone. A narcissistic individual like me needs someone to compare himself with to feel good, or to feel like there is something to accomplish that I have not achieved yet. I remember in uni we used to learn a lot from each other because of how open the conversation was .

proceeds to spend entire article detailing how you're less productive

> I literally become a different developer

I don't see how... unless you're conflating productivity with somehow being a different person?

The whole thing is just a thinly-veiled product shill from the company itself IMO. I don't think it takes some proprietary software to tell most of us that distractions make it harder to focus?

The real issue here is that you're getting distracted by everything. That happens in my production environment, too. The fact that isolation improves your productivity isn't exclusively an effect of being at home. You are not being allowed to organize and keep on track and on task with the distractions, as you so record in your data. When people on the production line in my company get distracted, problems occur. Thus I try to make sure absolutely nothing can go wrong when they start a job up, and leave no reason for others to come around to cause or create a distraction. The only times anyone should be getting distracted or called upon is first article or final inspection, and that's (usually) it. Every other person has set tasks and I'll give them some slack time on the line so they don't have their brains clock out on the monotony of some of the highly-repetitive tasks and thus generate mistakes.

Since I walked into the company 5 years ago, production has increased roughly an order of magnitude. Just let your employees work undistracted and without stupid meetings that do nothing for their productivity, and reap the benefits.

Or you can just succumb to Agile and be non-productive beyond belief. Yea that was the first thing to go when I walked in the door.

I think you mean “productive” (and even that would be arguable).