I once worked under similar conditions. It was at a very small software company, they made a chiropractic practice management app and I was on the support team. There were four of us on the team, including our manager, and our cubicles were in a cross shape with two open sides each. My cubicle had my back wide open to the CEO's and lead programmer/VP's offices, so if either of them walked out of the office they could see my screen. I never had anything not work-related on my screen, but I was big into anime at the time and so my wallpaper was SE: Lain or Cowboy Bebop or Robotech or whatever, depending on my mood that day.

Anyway, I was the butt of a lot of jokes when I'd close out of a full screen app and one of them would walk by and see it. It's a bit dehumanizing to have the two most important people in the company make fun of you at the lunch table every day. "Hey Morgan, which cartoons are you watching now?" "My 5 year old can recommend some for you" and so on. Yeah, I was a college kid and all my peers were into anime too, but it stings when your bosses make fun of you every day. If we had had a more sensible cubicle layout with our screens facing away from the entrance, it would have been a less stressful job.

> Yeah, I was a college kid and all my peers were into anime too, but it stings when your bosses make fun of you every day. If we had had a more sensible cubicle layout with our screens facing away from the entrance, it would have been a less stressful job.

Or if you had bosses with a modicum of respect for their employees, independent of cubicle arrangement.

Yeah, the cubicle configuration was only part of the problem. Early on I had expressed an interest in learning to code (I was taking SQL and Java programming classes alongside my regular courses in college at the time), and I approached the lead programmer/VP with this desire. He said he'd get back to me on it, that they had no problem with training me up to work on the codebase since they needed fresh eyes on it. The next day he drops about a ream of printed paper on my desk and said I should "study this code" and let him know what I thought of it. It wasn't code of course; it was old garbage data they used to test the program. Not a single line of actual code, just pages and pages of test data. I felt it was equivalent to an adult handing their toddler a toy cellphone to keep them occupied.

Needless to say, I quit working there once I was out of school, and went back to government work.

"That's a playground tease right there. My kid can show you better ways to do it."

I'm the same way, and it's not even a privacy concern really. Just an animal instinct to be weary of what is going on behind me that I can't see.

You can get a screen shield that reduces viewing angles for that kind of stuff. That's what we do for HR/accounting staff who are in open areas.

That's a good idea but it would make showing my screen to co-workers more difficult. It would also, no doubt, make me the butt of a number of jokes about "What is Josh doing that's so secretive" to which I would like to reply "None of your fucking business" but we all know I can't/won't. I think what sucks the most is the people ALWAYS making the decisions on how offices are laid out are the same people who have offices so they really don't care about the people in cubes.

Note: While I'm not a huge fan of cubicles I don't have a huge issue with them, just how ours are laid out (Large cube with a desk in each corner facing the wall). I can see some advantages but IMHO the privacy issue trumps them all.

Again, I want to thank you for your suggestion but I just don't think it will work for me.

I'd argue that what people are doing at work is by definition their coworkers' business.

And you would be correct for the most part but for development at least (and undoubtedly for other jobs but I'm a programmer so I'm going to focus on that) I don't just work between the hours of 9-5. I can't stop myself for thinking about work problems from bleeding over into my personal time. Likewise I cannot function as a human being in the United States without using some time that most people would consider "work hours" for personal matters. A number of gov entities are only open while I'm at work (Some even only make their website available from 9-5, a cardinal sin if there ever was one), things like banking need to happen within certain hours or they get pushed to the next day, etc.

Furthermore I use my personal computer as my work computer so there are apps/notifications that are not of a work-nature and are not for my coworkers eyes. Also I don't know if you have company chat or use some chat program at work but I'm guessing you would not like all of your chat's to be public or even just public with your co-workers. What I'm trying to say is I get where you are coming from but I don't think you are considering all the things you might do on your computer that you might not want to hide but at the same time you don't want to advertise.

More and more what happens on my screen is an extension of my brain and so you could say watching me use my computer is watching me think (from the searches I do, the docs I look up, etc). No one would consider giving a running monologue of their thoughts throughout the day but watching my screen get's pretty close to that, for me at least.... I may be an edge case but I think that I deserve some level of privacy. If you want to know what I'm doing ask the PM (or look on my whiteboard) or look at my commits or just ask me, you don't need to watch over my shoulder to know what I'm up to.

> Some even only make their website available from 9-5, a cardinal sin if there ever was one

Not for the US so could you give me some examples?

Here is one example: http://freakonomics.com/2012/08/20/this-website-only-open-du... but I'm pretty sure I ran into an issue with the IRS website (how we pay/manage our taxes) but now I can't find mention of it.

Some people have said it may be due to reports that run at night and can't have new data coming in while they run or something similar but I don't buy it. If that's the case then just modify your query such that the data it gets has a "WHERE submitted_date <= <EOD DateTime>".

Certain US federal government websites will be inactive during certain late hours. In extreme cases they are only available during regular business (9a-5p).

This is almost always because there is some ambiguously worded regulatory or statutory requirement that says that department or entity has to provide live personal support, and rather than pay the increased staff they just take the site down.