I've experienced something like this programming in a room in the basement of a hospital at a medical imaging device for 8 hours, where notable project progress came in the course of days, not hours. With the absence of light, external stimulation, voices, or people, which would traditionally alert the mind to refocus on another stimuli and contextualize the stimulation against the time of day, the only alert is progress. To be clear, there is no mistaking the long period of time spent during the day whilst performing the mechanics of the task, but at the conclusion of the day, if there was no milestone of progress hit, and were it a day where there were literally zero interruptions, it would feel like I had only been down there 3 hours.
My office at work is on the other side of the building from everyone else and has no windows (I chose no windows over having people nearby). If I don't have a clock displayed on my taskbar the only sign I know it's time to eat or go home is the siren for the people who work in the factory on site.
It's a productive programming environment (for a certain type).
The constant distraction environment of cubicles severely hampers my productivity. I work from home as often as possible, but even then I'm no longer accustomed to being able to focus on one thing for so long that I feel like I'm becoming more ADD.
People complain about the social impacts of social media etc... I wonder if anyone has tried to identify/quantify the impact of cubicles/shared workspaces.
I've worked in several "open" office layouts for several large corporations and they're horrible. At one, it was so loud and distracting, I barely could get anything done due to all the interruptions. When one person would get sick, it was a chain reaction. Within days, half our team would be out sick. It was a miserable place to work. Both places abandoned the open office concept and went back to cubicles with additional "collaboration" spaces instead. Needless to say, it was much better.
The funny thing is the company I currently work for went back to this "open office" concept and call it "hoteling" now. They have desks with monitors and a dock everywhere and you just plug in your laptop and go. There are no more assigned seats. It's the same thing with predictable results though. People are constantly sick, they complain about the interruptions (I had a guy doing his kettle bell workout at his desk across from me) and the struggle to maintain concentration. The problem is, they've gone all in on the concept. The company dropped millions of dollars in renovating the building so I don't see a change any time soon. I just work from home now as often as possible.
I've seen some cubicles that are higher and appear to provide more privacy, but I've never actually worked in one/for a company that uses them.
The company I work for now has the short cubicles. Noise isn't contained, and a large number of people work with remote teams/employees and are constantly on calls. Its a complete PITA.
I WFH as often as I can get away with, but my previous habits/skills of focus and concentration have significantly deteriorated in all aspects of my life. I'm actively working on ways to combat this, but I fear without a more comprehensive lifestyle change my success will be limited. (thankfully the one thing I can still do is disappear into a book for hours)
One company I worked at had a bunch of octagon tables, pushed together and your monitors would face each other. Another one, I had cubicles like the ones you referenced and we were told it was an open office concept as well.
Another company I worked at had super high (like 8' high) cubicle walls for their customer service people and other people (sales team, account managers) who were on the phone constantly, which would be awesome for privacy and noise. Ironically, all the developers sat at long picnic like tables, shoulder to shoulder working, it was the worst. I only last a month before leaving since it felt so much like a sweatshop.
I've been working on ways to combat this. Taking on longer tasks/projects at home, and requiring myself to pace myself/go slowly and focus on details. Also got back into reading more which can take my attention for hours without too much effort.
I'm getting to the point where I want to shut all personal notifications, social media access etc.. off for 12 hours a day (mid-late evening to morning) to remove distractions and interruptions, and try to do things that require focus and concentration during those periods (also sleeping, and staying in bed/not grabbing my phone if I can't sleep)
Me too. Measured in lines of code output, my optimal distribution of interaction probably looks like a Laffer curve. Too little and I distract myself often, too much and I spend all my time interacting and not much on code.
Put me on a job where interaction is also beneficial (pair programming, XP, working with a newbie, supporting QA at the next desk over) and I'm fairly sure I'm much more productive overall in a moderate-to-highly collaborative environment. Silent solitude sounds miserable. Completely miserable.
Agreed but I love it however I usually have IRC open on a different workspace in one of the channels I've hung out in for years so if I want to shoot the breeze with someone I can talk to them - I work for a manufacturing firm and I'm the only programmer so I can't really talk about my job in any depth with non-programmers anyway.
When doing my PhD, I was working in a research center which was open 24/7.
I would go to work at 14, starting with a lunch at the cafeteria. Then hopped to buy some groceries. By 17 a lot of people were gone and I could start to really work through the evening and the night, until about 5 am when the sun was raising - which was the signal to go to bed.
I felt like a vampire, had zero social life but did fantastic work.
The main thing was that I knew it would be temporary and not sustainable, which also made me very happy (it was a fun experience, au from family and friends, and I knew I would be back to normal life soon).
