I really enjoy the cafe vibe. I enjoy working in cafes. But, man, sometimes I need to back off on the coffee.
Without having suffered the misfortune of working in an open office, I wonder if open floor-plan offices are trying to capture the cafe sensibility.
Or are they just panopticons?
@emdeesee I think co-working spaces might be the coffee shop alt
Open plans are definitely just employer panopticons, especially when they ban headphones
@emdeesee some people think they constant face to face contact is very important for teams
@twirm What's your opinion about this?
@twirm At $DAY_JOB, our teams have the ability to have constant face-to-face contact, but my perception is that huge amounts of productive communication occurs on our IRC channels. Devs self-organize into a more remote-like working environment (but can easily pair if they want to, which is cool).
It makes me wonder about the value of our office building (to the entirety of which the water was turned off yesterday afternoon, prompting many to call it a day early).
@emdeesee I think the availability of f2f contact is a necessity in very rare circumstances. I assume that isolation boosts my productivity, so I go out of my way to avoid f2f and strive for alternatives with Hangouts or IRC meetings.
As you said, that is mainly for dev workflows though. I find that working interdepartmentally tends to force f2f because other teams are dependent on f2f due to lack of experience with other tools or resistance to add another technology
@twirm And you're right, a coworking space is probably a good mix of the cafe culture and getting stuff done. I hadn't thought of that until you pointed it out.
@twirm Oof! Is that a thing? To a potential employee, that should be a great big red flag...