For one, they are all mentioned in a book I've been listening while driving lately: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.
Ok so what does her book have to do with software development, you may be asking. On the surface, not much. The book is about the differences between extroverted and introverted personality types. Introverted persons prefer to observe, think, analyse and generally enjoy solitude more than crowds.
As a sweeping generalisation it could be said that software engineers tend to be introverted, like myself for example. In fact as an even more sweeping generalisation it could be said that many people in occupations that benefit from creativity are populated by introverts.
Let's take me for example. I don't like socialising with people much. I hate large crowds and especially loud places where I have to raise my voice. I never talk just to hear my voice and I think meetings are mostly unnecessary venues for extroverted people to have audience for their monologues. Or arguments if there is more than one dominant person in the meeting. I'm mortally afraid of public speaking and doing things in front of an audience. To get work done optimally, I need peace and quiet and freedom.
Now imagine that someone asked me: "What would be the worst possible place to work you can imagine as an introverted person?".
Off the top of my head I came up with a list of these attributes:
- No privacy
- Having to share my working space with many other people
- No freedom to arrange my working environment
- Lots of obligatory meetings where there's no real discussion of things that matter to my personal work
- Demanded presence, but no freedom to engage in ad hoc conversations
- Noise that I can't avoid
- Interruptions I can't control
Sadly and not surprisingly I just ended up describing the average open office working environment most of us have to work these days. This is bad. Really bad.
For a while in the beginning of 00s, it seemed like things were getting better in at least one regard: You could escape the horrendous office spaces and work remotely. Then the agile boom swept the industry and oh boy, look at what's being implemented by literally everybody, even the government IT-projects: mandatory 100% on-site presence. All the other fancy stuff of agile is just too complicated or too cumbersome to do, but hey, let's make the bastards all sit in 20 square meter space with absolutely no privacy and we'll reap the benefits of agile!
In all honesty, I'm avoiding high profile agile projects these days for this sole purpose. Or if I'm forced to, I'm quite inclined to simply break the rules and hope I will be forgiven because of how much more productive I am than other people in the team who obediently sit in less space than zoo animals are given and try to desperately get some privacy for actual work by listening to music with insulated headphones.
I would love to see a reform in the agile project culture that would relax the fundamental attitude regarding this. Linux kernel wasn't and isn't done by people sitting in the same room. World wide web wasn't created like that, in fact it was created just for the opposite purpose.
A very interesting subtopic of Cain's book is that creative teamwork, contrary to common belief, isn't more productive than working alone. The times when great results have been made, are most often when the team members have been able to work by themselves and then share and collaborate online through distance!
And here, of course, come Pixar Headquarters and Steve Jobs into this story. If I had to work 100% of my working time at an office, that is where I would like to work. Pixar headquarters are usually mentioned because of the huge main atrium that provokes unplanned, ad hoc sharing of ideas. But just as important, probably more important, is the fact that besides this atrium where you can go and meet people when you feel like it, the creative employees have private space where they do the actual work. I think for many reasons, this is optimal and the closer you can get to this, the better.
But office space is really expensive! It is. So why not have just the atrium and some space for people who really want to be at the office most of the time? And for the saved renting costs, give a small budget to your employees to decorate their home office, buy them a good chair at home and a good desk. Then have one day a week when most people meet at the office atrium and have a good lunch. Let them share war stories from the projects they are working on, talk about new ideas. Anything, but making them listen and watch through a slideshow by a manager about manager stuff.
But wasn't the point of being in the same room that you could just lift your head and ask a teammate if you wanted to know something? The funny thing is, my personal observation is that the physical distance of the two people have much less to do with this happening than the willingness of these two people to communicate in the first place.
Here's where I wholeheartedly agree with 37signals founder Jason Fried. Use good online communication tools that enable passive communication. And then try to create a working atmosphere where this passive communication is encouraged. A good way to do this is to have a team so well spread to different locations that not one person involved feels like she's in a position to expect the others to come to her physically to share information.
Oh I almost forgot about Tom DeMarco. I mentioned him because I've read his Peopleware -book many times. He's been saying this same thing since 1980s and we've only gotten worse. Working environment is crucial for people who do creative work, especially when they are introverts - like many people in creative arts and crafts are.
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