An Office Environment

Since I picked it up in grad school, I've been fascinated by a book called Peopleware and the different ways of thinking about the work place.

This morning I read a bit about how a work place or work space affects the productivity of a software developer:

"Staying late or arriving early or staying home to work in peace is a damning indictment of the office environment. The amazing thing is not that it's so often impossible to work in the workplace; the amazing thing is that everyone knows it and nobody ever does anything about it."
- Chapter 8, "You Never Get Anything Done Around Here from 9 to 5"

They went on to describe a study they did involving developer productivity. They found the normal 10:1 range of individual developer productivity. What was surprising was they also found that there was a 10:1 or so range for organizational productivity - with two developers from each organization. The two developers from each performed on about the same level.

It would seem that not only individual developer productivity matters, but also their working environment.