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"Could" translate. Not "Does" translate. Turn this around again. What's more valuable: your productivity or the overall team productivity? Open offices don't have to be a place where it's "too easy to interrupt", but I agree they often are.



I'll put my money on "does".

If you don't interrupt me, you lose 30 minutes of your time solving your problem (and, by the way, learn to learn along the way).

If you do interrupt me, you save yourself, say, 25 minutes, while I probably lose 60 minutes of effective flow time ("gee, I'm distracted now, might as well go to the bathroom and get another coffee while I'm at it... oh hey, look some emails, let's take a look at those...").

And that's ignoring the distraction you create for all the folks around me as you come and ask your question.

So in terms of overall team productivity (which is a function of the individual productivity levels of the team members), I will happily take the bet that open offices are far worse than closed ones in the the scenario you've proposed.


You're basically saying that your productivity is more important than someone else's productivity.




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