Hacker News Reader

Comment by darylteo | Hacker News Reader

The "being watched" feeling is the big one for me. I don't mind wearing headphones because I love listening to music and I don't listen to it that loudly, but the sensation of feeling someone's eyes on you (to catch you on the split second you've refreshed reddit or facebook or something) is incredibly profound on the time it takes to zone into zen mode.

Anecdotally funnily enough, the opposite seems to happen for me when I am pair programming: each person keeps the other in focus, but obviously this only works when both people have the same objective. Not really related to "open office" issue, but thought it was relevant.

Or maybe I'm just a filthy procrastinator...

View on HN

It's not even necessarily to do with being caught slacking off, but being exposed outside your field of view creates anxiety in your animal brain.

When I consciously think about someone who happens to see my screen at work I can easily brush the thought off and tell myself I don't care. But my subconscious thinks differently because I can feel myself get a little tense when someone comes up to, or walk by, my desk. I get the same feeling whether my screen is showing me doing work or not. It's an annoying feeling.

I specifically request desks where my back is to a wall for this very reason.

You need breaks during the day. Programming is creative work. Some people can just march on like a machine, but I know my own style is to have an incredibly high output stretch of 3-4 hours, punctuated before and after by lots of email writing, bug reading and goofing off on reddit / hn.

I don't like having people watching me, but facing other people (just having them in my field of view) is even more distracting.

this bothers me too. I make sure my monitor is high enough so I can't easily see their eyes.

I've had the same experience with pair programming: when done with someone you get along very well with, and with the same goal in mind, one or the other of you might get stuck but rarely both at the same time. (And on those rare occasions, observing that we were both stuck was a good sign to more quickly treat it as a problem requiring deep thought, rather than staring at a screen for a while.)

I completely agree. Pair programming was mentally exhausting for me (4 sessions per day of 90 minutes), but we were almost constantly productive. When we both got stuck, that's when we would pair swap. It was the best job I've had so far, but it was exhausting. I stayed focused on the task at hand for the entire day. At the end of the day, however, I had absolutely no desire to work on side projects or learn something new. I was spent.

I don't do pair programming at work; when I did pair programming, it was with a friend for various side projects, and we'd do it for a 12+ hour day (broken up by a couple of meals. It was exhausting in a good way: it felt maximally productive, as well as exhilarating.

I had the same experience working for a company that did pair programming 100% of the time. Very productive but exhausting, and in my mind, not sustainable.

On a side note, I wonder how effective fb/reddit really is for taking pauses..? I would certainly have thoughts about it as an employer, but I know it's considered perfectly normal by most people. I don't mean I'm capable of hour-long stretches of work, far from it. I take lots of pauses, but flipping to a new browser tab doesn't do it for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com