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Who like cube farms?

Why is the simple concept of rooms the size of a small team often neglected?
Why is everybody after cubicles or open spaces?

Having relatively small rooms (4 to 7 people) seems simple and efficient enouh for me. One size does not fit all. It depends on your business and the size of your team.

Jonathan Cogley says why he is not a fan of cubes. I would hate having to work in a cubicle for the reasons Jonathan highlights. An open space has almost as many disavantages as cubicles:

  • Of course you have no privacy at all, so you cannot feel "at home"
  • You can easily get disturbed by anyone speaking or walking or dancing or whatever the fool decides to do in the room to help you loose (lose!) your focus
  • You cannot ask help from you teamates because you have to keep quiet in order not to disturb the others
  • You feel less part of a team compared to a small room where only people focused on the same project or technology are with you. You just feel like being part of a big thing. That can be motivating, I recon. But being surrounded by highly motivated teamates is better, IMO

Of course walls everywhere is not good for productivity. But why choose the extremes?! 

1 Comment

  • The company I work for likes team rooms: stuff everybody on the team into a conference room. This worked OK on the first team I was on. The second team though, it was awful. The team was mostly composed of chatty people and so the team room was never quiet. There were frequently three different conversations going on at any one time and usually only one was work related. After two months, I left and went back to my cubicle so I could concentrate.



    I prefer private offices but that can be pretty isolating especially for loners like me. I was in shared offices for a while and that works pretty well even if the two developers are not on the same team.

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