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Yeah, all but one of your complaints would be solved by a door[1]. Are there actually programmers who prefer the open-office setting? It's not like I magically stop socializing if you put me in an office.

The only thing worse than open-office for me is a setting where my back is to a space that people are walking through. I can't even have my back to an open doorway in an office (assuming the hallway outside is somewhat busy), or I spend much of my time in a low-grade fight-or-flight situation.

If you put me in an open office where people are regularly walking by behind me, you are probably getting (at best) 60% of my productivity in an office with a door. Actually, in this job market, you are getting 0% of my productivity because I will work elsewhere.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door

>Are there actually programmers who prefer the open-office setting?

Yes, I prefer it. I can very easily drown out everyone and everything in the room by simply listening to music when I need to, and I like the proximity to everyone else that the open office provides.

Well also, my preferred attire (work or otherwise) is barefoot+gym shorts+shirtless, I would enjoy nothing more than consecutive full days without human contact during the week, the ability to fart and pick my nose without hesitation, and not having to worry the bathroom stalls are full when I need to take a shit, but I realize most of those are unreasonable to ask of an office so I left them off the list. However, those are more reasons unrelated to an open office I would prefer to work from home on the regular.

You forgot climate control too. Office buildings always seem to have their HVAC poorly calibrated and controlled by some mysterious ghost.

There are so many reasons... I think you either get it, or you don't.

> Yeah, all but one of your complaints would be solved by a door

most places if you close the door your office is cut off from the nearest thermostat, so you get too hot or too cold.

...assuming your office was even a reasonable temperature to start with. and that the HVAC is working that day. and that your office mate isn't some 70 year old who is cold all the time but can't just put on a sweater.

> Are there actually programmers who prefer the open-office setting? It's not like I magically stop socializing if you put me in an office.

Me. I like having the background activity and don't find it distracting. I've only done it in small group / company settings though.

Good luck finding a decent employer that'll give you an office with a door these days.

Open office plans are awful, just as bad as cube farms where they mix their yacking sales people in with engineers. I've spent brief time working in many different office layouts and none of them were places I'd like to work. One startup had this guy with the loudest mechanical keyboard I've ever heard. I was in the complete diagonal opposite side of the office and it sounded like brief bursts of ping pong. It was the most distracting thing of any of the offices I've been in. Not one single office I ever went to did the right thing and gave engineers their own office with a door.

The last line stands out. I have office friends that I love but sometimes if I get to work and see a certain person hanging around I know my productivity is going to drop due to chatter. I enjoy the chats! It's just that I need to get stuff done.

>Constantly being pulled aside for conversations that can be answered in a sentence or two via slack or email.

Personal pet peeve: questions that I answer by literally pulling up the commit message for the last commit that changed the line in question.

I work from home because I work better on a quiet environment like you and I agree with every other of your points.

I guess there are different kind of personalities, some people prefer working from an office others prefer working from an Starbucks. I have a coworker who prefers the library.

My ultimate "office perk" is no meetings over skype/hangout/zoom/gotomeeting.

https://twitter.com/woloski/status/605788426546221060

> not having me in person forces people to think about and write down exactly what they want to say or ask

This alone is a major productivity booster

It basically forces the person to do a small amount of rubber duck debugging before they ask a question or comment on something. Catches a lot of issues before the person actually hits enter on their slack message or email.

What can you really concentrate on when there is commentary somewhere oO?!

There is a fucking difference between commentary and music and radio btw.

I do the same thing. I can listen to talk radio and read a book at the same time. I get similar responses to what you have said here.

I am a high performer (because my boss is a dick...I'm my boss) and I work everyday with a twitch stream of Hearthstone running on my laptop. It's background noise that helps me focus. When I need a little break, I tune in and pay attention.

Try not to project your own limitations on to other people!

There are enough studies which tells you that we are not good in multitasking. It costs you more resources.

Depends on what I'm doing. If I'm grinding through stuff I know exactly how to do, but can't automate away, I find having something like people talking or an audiobook I know well running in the background actually helps me focus. It occupies just enough of my mind that I don't feel tempted to get distracted by the internet.

I have a whole range of preferred noise depending on the task, from dead silence for hard, tricky problems up to what I just described for easy but important detail work. I even know exactly what kind of music I want to listen to for different tasks, and whether or not I want vocals in it.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to what works for people.

There's probably some relation between this and growing up with the TV on 100% of waking hours, even when no-one's watching (which is really common).