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Comment by RivieraKid | Hacker News Reader

For me the problem is not really distractions (I don't care if people interrupt me from time to time, in fact I like it). My problem is the mental strain that stems from lack of privacy, the knowledge that people can see me and my monitor all the time, it's like there's a background process in my mind that checks whether what I want to do (move a lot in my chair, comment on HN, eat something) is ok with people around me. And this constant monitoring and self-control is tiring.

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One thing that helped me get past this feeling was looking around at other desks and realizing that either a. no one cares what you are doing because they are too busy working on their own stuff or b. half the office is watching youtube anyway.

Also remember that your company likely logs everyone’s web activity in an easily searcheable format.

While this is hardly an unknown fact amongst HN readers, a lot of people get very surprised when told about this.I've seen some of my colleagues going to private mode to browse something not work related, and when I explain that tbis won't help at all, they are almost shocked.

you mean everyone doesn't just use their phones for browsing non-work related things?

They do- most of them connected to the company's WiFi :)

But company doesn't know who has phone with given MAC address, while computers MACs are probably assigned to employee.

I'm sure I could trace it back to most people with high level of accuracy, as it's a small company.

It does if you have to log into the captive portal to use the wifi.

I’m wondering if the new Brave browser’s Tor-based private mode makes a difference.

Many companies have systems circumventing https via additional certificates—effectively a man in the middle attack.

I am shocked, shocked to find that non-work related browsing is going on here!

As someone who actually works on the IT-side of this, your statement is technically correct but my experience suggests a vanishingly-small number of employers actually monitor this data in any rigorous way. The only time I've ever seen an org reviewing web logs was in response to a specific formal HR complaint.

I get easily startled when I am very focused and people walk around in my peripheral vision or behind me. It really stresses me out. I work remote now so life is good but when I was at the office I was completely exhausted every evening because of this stress

I'm the same way. I'm downright jumpy. The result seems to be people think I'm up to something lol

This is very common even when people have no sense of needing to “hide” what’s on their screen... it’s just a natural fight vs flight human impulse to he worried about who is walking around in your space.

Even worse for the large fraction of the population who are introverts.

Even worse for people with PTSD than for introverts.

Foucault wouldn't be surprised at all at the prevalence of open-plan offices.

Or JIRA and its abuses

The association of open-plan offices to the Panopticon:

> ..The fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that they are motivated to act as though they are being watched at all times. Thus, the inmates are effectively compelled to regulate their own behaviour.

> ..Foucault used the panopticon as metaphor for the modern disciplinary society in Discipline and Punish.

> He argued that discipline had replaced the pre-modern society of kings, and that the panopticon should not be understood as a building, but as a mechanism of power and a diagram of political technology.

> ..In the landmark surveillance narrative Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell said: "there was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment ... you had to live ... in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised."

Orwell was way off. Our every movement is scrutinized even when it’s dark.

Foucault would also argue that open-office is the best office plan. His ideas of the power structure behind discipline reach far beyond what the penal system implemented them as.

I'll second this. You only have so much mental energy and focus. Managing your self image in a room full of others is wasteful and exhausting.

A couple of high-end screen privacy filters paid by me of course, solved the problem 100%. Stress levels went way down

This resonates so much with me. One of the advantages of being an early engineer at my company has meant that I was able to choose my spot in office: right at the back, next to a window, in the corner.

Sure, it feels like I'm being a bit anti-social at times, but I'm very comfortable in my corner :)

Exactly! I would be fine in an open office where monitors can't be seen from behind (sideways is okay, I should be able to show colleagues sitting beside me, my screen). Perhaps, between two rows a thin paper-ish wall can be put up.

That's by design. Look up 'panopticon'

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