She only woke me up to tell me I've got to 'earn' a window.

[hirez]

URL dump + notes. Sole purpose to remind me that Another.com was the single worst work environment I've yet encountered and to provide supporting documentation. Actually, they've all been fairly hopeless. Lordy, but that's a grim revelation. Computing - making the same set of mistakes for the last thirty years. No wonder this 'industry' is such a joke.

(Most links thieved from the excellent JoelOnSoftware.)

This is the original posting.

The Fog Creek office

IBM get it right in 1978. Nineteen seventy-bloody-eight, mark you. Admittedly, it looks like The Forbin Project, but they've understood a concept I mention a lot - Monastic contemplation of code. (Follow the link to the PDF.)

An article that makes my teeth itch. A disturbingly familiar problem, yet they manage to fix it.

Comments

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I did once get someone sacked for incessantly drumming their fingers. Well, okay, it was a symptom of him not doing any work and so he needed to be ditched anyway, but it was the drumming that stopped me from working. And then there was m lovely glass office, with Radio 1 coming through the wall on one side, and Radio WM coming through the wall on the other.

I've never understood how programmers - or indeed anyone who has to juggle a large amount of information in their head - can cope with interruption. These cube farm things - I mean how on earth can that work? Do people condition themselves to be able to blank out the external world... or is programming these days much more of a trivial persuit?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

The short answer is that you don't cope with interruption. There are a lot of references for this (which I'll dig up later of I need to) but the finger-in-air stuff is that it seems to take you about 15-20 minutes to get into the state of mind where you're producing code at peak rate. Any interruption means that wind-up process has to restart.

So you either get headphones and a threatening expression or come in at odd hours when there's no bugger about. Otherwise code quality and speed of development go right down the toilet.

I'd guess that one manager out of the yea-many I've encountered had any clue about this.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

IMHO, HP got its cube farm pretty much right (I don't know what HiRez thinks here). Big individual cubes (twice standard sizes) with high walls, all in a large office space with high ceilings and a mongo big atrium. You don't really need "a window each" if you're within sight of a Big Room indoors that's nearly as open, well lit and full of trees as the Big Blue Room outside.

One of the best features was the cube wall height - high, but with a low section that visitors could lean over. You were acessible, but they didn't have to invade your space to come and visit.

Good cable management, plenty of power and data, and no need for extension leads or adapters.

Plants pretty much for the asking (with maintenance contracts), or bring your own.

No kettles in the coffee kitchens, instant boiling water instead. Sadly this also meant no real coffee within reach of your desk, unless you used your own Cona funnel, but equally there was no hassle over filling coffee filter machines. The good coffee was downstairs in the sofa zone.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I think you're probably right. I think I'm now unable to get into 'hack mode' for other reasons. Hm - something to talk about w/counsellor, I think.

Anyway, direct from the 'picture worth a good half hour of Haylorist rant' dept, we find this (http://images.riviera.org.uk/gallery//Funmail%20and%20Another.com/offices/Highgate-Studios/19991219/-8.jpg)
(Wonder if anyone will follow the referer path? Hello Robin, if so), which is the Another.com office in KT nearing completion.

Observe the high ceilings, bare walls, huge windows and lovely wooden floor. Further observe the narrow non-adjustable 'desks' with their minimalist lack of storage and the way that we all had to work in rows such that you were never more than two feet away from anyone else.

As a design, it's a splendid thing.

As somewhere to try and write code, it was grim.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Lovely. RSG retro, only with narrower desks.

I take it the Aeron belongs to someone in marketing, and was just wheeled in to make the pic look expensive.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

No, we all had them.

Bloody things. Comfortable, once you'd spent about half an hour fiddling with the myriad knobs (which stuck), but since they all looked the same, you could never guarantee the one you'd got right the day before was the one you'd plonk your arse on in the AM.

Mind, the desks were all set up for someone slightly taller, so I had to sit there with my feet swinging like a five-year-old in daddy's chair... Ow.

It would have been a great office for, oh, I dunno, city traders or howler monkeys or some other tribe that survived on bustle and shouting.

[reddragdiva]

Oh dear Lord.

I have been expected to program in the middle of an "open" plan office with the lead programmer's radio blaring Christian rock, in between of course his long phone arguments with his wife. Fantastic. Then they flushed the system a month after we finished it, because all IT got centralised!!

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I've worked in _much_ worse places.

Years ago, I wrote industrial control stuff for big metal-bashing factories. I wrote the code at home (developing a serious Radio4 habit), then went briefly on site to "install" and "test" it. This usually consisted of sitting alongside the machine on the shop floor for two weeks, re-writing the whole thing because the spec had been by aliens.

Austin Rover's bodypanel in Swindon was one of the worst. Insanely noisy, with thousand ton presses beating Metros to shape all around. The floor was the usual wooden blocks, covered in a layer of metal-forming grease. This slime got everywhere, making it a bit like the nest site in Alien. So my working attire was a suit and tie (this being British industry), accessorised by ear defenders, hobnailed clogs (mere combats slippped over on the wax) and a huge pack of babywipes. Our control gear mains feed was tapped off a press motor and had the waveform of an arc welder.

I had no desk, chair or electricity. Any evidence of such would indicate that we were installing evil Computers, which would trigger a demand for IT-skilled-worker payrises and a strike (this was after all, Austin Rover). So I had to balance my laptop on my knees, until I realised it was going to be a long job and nipped out for a folding picnic table and a hatstand. Now I had my own vaguely clean table, and a slime-free peg to hang the suit and baggage on.

Electricity was supplied by a long extension lead to the shop steward's tea-brewing kettle socket. Long enough that I couldn't see when they were about to unplug it. This cost me a new kettle and a donation to the worker's revolutionary tea club to have it left reliably alone.


OTOH, I know Hirez has worked in at least two places worse than Another. He was probably trying to forget those 8-)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Epsilon was long enough ago that I've forgotten that is was run by an idiot with an over-inflated opinion of his coding skill. I've also forgotten the coding room filled with binbags full of rotting McD's detritus.

On the other hand, I do remember doing very little work because of Pascal's comic collection and Adrian's Sainsbury's bag stuffed with grass.

What was the other one? The place where the bloke with the baseball bat turned up demanding money? Or Inepte - the place were Pointy-Hair-in-charge went 'Never mind that code - run along and wash my car.' ?

Oh - the Dart Engine? I should find that saga and post it.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of VanDerBastard, and when I met him some time later. He had a pretty high opinion of you (but not TSB) and claimed you'd lived under the desk at night.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

You worked for Another.com?

I feel bad for having an address with them once, now. Admittedly they did steal it back off me and not let me have the contents of my inbox, but. Ig.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I fear so. It was the indoor lawn that swung it for me.