We will probably be moving within a year, so we have to make some decisions regarding office layout. At the moment, our company is basically one big office. When our developers can't bother to be disturbed at all, we all have our own headphones to mute the outside world. Still, it seems a lot of people feel that private offices are n...
We're reorganizing our workspaces at work, and are individually being given the choice of working in a more open space with a few other developers, or a more closed off space by ourselves. Which should I choose? ...
We have project activities now and then where a few of the employees agreed upon at the last project activity set something up, like a bowling night, board gaming night, movie night or, for that matter, jujutsu test practice which we actually had once. The costs for these things tend to range around 10-15$ per person, 5$ more if you coun...
Hey, I'm a university student, at the Junior level, And I'm trying to figure out my plans. I'm fairly sure I can land a job at a major corporation given my background and education. However, I can't figure out whether or not it would be more rewarding to start a startup of my own or to take the safer approach of a BigCo™. So do you work...
I am always misunderstood by my non-technical boss. Its frustrating that they would think that a programmer isn't working when he's not in front of the computer typing code.... or even when in front of the computer and has his browser on, reading about new programming stuff. It got to the point where I was told I was unproductive even ...
I'm certain that I'm not the first person to run into this scenario, so I figured I'd throw it out there and see what the SO hive has to say. As a disclaimer, the person on which I base this question is not someone I currently work with. What is a tactful but effective way of showing someone that some of their "old dog" habits have fall...
At my workplace, it has been suggested that each developer is given the opportunity to indicate to his peers that he is busy and cannot be disturbed. This would be done in order to ensure that you don't get disturbed, when you are "in the zone". Do you think this is a good idea ? Do you have anything like that at your workplace ? I am...
Have there been any studies on productivity and code quality comparing team room approach aka bullpen versus private offices? I've only been able to find studies comparing the faux office (cubical) versus the real office. I've read about both Caves and Commons and peopleware. ...
Hi, After asking this question, and reading some of the comments, I realised that some of my peers would simply refuse to work for a large corporate environments. Personally, I have worked for both small start-ups (6 employees), medium sized ISVs (180 employees), and several large IT Services companies (10,000+ employees). Each type o...
Dear all, My boss required the deployment procedure and project environment document for a web project(.Net) from me and I'm not sure what it include or how it should look like to be. the deployment procedure in my project has the topic like this: Test Permission Test Requirement Merge Persist workflow task Merge MS Project Export En...
As a programmer, I feel burnt out if the management give me spec after spec, day after day. I think I can code 6 hours a day very focused, but non-stop coding does burn me out a little, especially it is 1 year or 18 months non-stop. A mere 1 week or 2 week vacation per year isn't going to help much. Sometimes I want to take some time ...
Anyone got reccomendations for the best IDE software for a windows powered computer? I want text editor, css editor, ftp, live preview if poss, and it should also be able to handle php and javascript. Any suggestions? What do you use and what is awesome! ...
In a recent blog post, Jeff displayed a pic of Jarrod's lair, and in the pic at the top of the blog post, he's got a really nifty keyboard podium on wheels. Does anyone out there know of some other hardware out there that performs a similar function, or is Jarrod's thing pretty much all there is on the market? EDIT: The issue with my c...
Not really looking for description of bosses, but the actual physical surrounding, e.g. desks, chairs, whiteboards, reference libraries, group coffee, etc. Just interested in how many programmers actually work in idealistic conditions and what serious software developers have in their work environment in order to improve their productiv...
I just got hired as a web developer for a marketing company (though they do lots of things, development is the bread and butter). I'm a self taught developer with zero experience as a programmer other than my own freelance stuff. I've always been in the sales/consulting side of business, never been paid for being a geek really. And so ...
As programmers we require a much more structured work environment than (for example) laborers, dentists, mechanics, etc. We need an atmosphere where we can concentrate on what we are doing, and not spend all day trying to figure out which one of the 100+ release procedures is the right one for a specific customer, or trying to fix a 10 y...
I hate my chair at work, it is just never comfortable, but its a 0.000001% chance that I would get a new one. What is the best way to ask or require them to get me a new one (doctor's note or something) ...
I'm trying to port my entire 'workspace' to a USB key (including the Eclipse executable) so that I can carry my work anywhere with me and work off the key directly. My directory hierarchy is similar to this: /workspace/eclipse - Where my current eclipse binary is stored /workspace/codebase - Where I keep the root of all my eclipse pr...
At our company we charge by the hour, which is actually broken down into 6 min chunks. At the end of the day you end up recording 8 HRS, 8.1 HRS (i.e., 8 HRS 6 min), etc. to a task, where the task is allocated a certain number of HRS. In our group we typically develop analytical code for a customer, and then perform some analysis. ...
I am in this situation : I am working on some three or four projects which uses different technologies (single person projects). It is assigned by different people. Also the priorities of the above projects keep changing and I am forced to switch from one to the another in when I am in the middle of doing something. Also I am assigned ...