Re:Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan
by Joeri on Wednesday August 09, 2017 @06:26AM
(#14967165)
That's the theory of why open plan is good.
In practice it doesn't pan out that way, because most 5 minute questions don't save that much time (answer was a 2 minute search away), don't take that much time (take much longer), and overall cost much more time (due to loss of flow).
Most (if not all) programmers need a state of flow to write quality code. Achieving flow after an interruption can easily take 15 minutes or more. If the environment discourages a state of flow by having frequent brief interruptions, the quality of the code written in that environment will be poor. If you had the ability to collect the right metrics, you'd probably find that bugs disproportionately are written right after an interruption.
In practice it doesn't pan out that way, because most 5 minute questions don't save that much time (answer was a 2 minute search away), don't take that much time (take much longer), and overall cost much more time (due to loss of flow).
Most (if not all) programmers need a state of flow to write quality code. Achieving flow after an interruption can easily take 15 minutes or more. If the environment discourages a state of flow by having frequent brief interruptions, the quality of the code written in that environment will be poor. If you had the ability to collect the right metrics, you'd probably find that bugs disproportionately are written right after an interruption.