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from the i-thought-those-perks-were-meant-to-keep-us-at-the-office-until-dawn dept.
lhsi writes:
"Research done by the Free University of Bozen-Bolzanohas in Italy concluded that happy software developers are better at solving analytical problems. 'Even simple and short activities', the researchers note, 'may impact the affective states of software developers.'
Many large software companies have been providing various perks to developers, hoping that they will become more productive. Based on a study of 42 students from the Faculty of Computer Science, this research seems to validate that practice. Its findings suggest that 'the happiest software developers are more productive in analytical problem solving performance.' This is in contradiction to previous studies, most of which concluding that negative affective states foster analytic problem-solving performance.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JMV on Tuesday March 11 2014, @10:12PM
why does it always seem that the university studies always contradict what we see in real-life?
example: my office decided to go with a 'open' work environment where we're all stuck in 4x6 half cubes so we can collaborate more... I was in a semi-private lab environment (with 2 - 4 other people working on the same projects as I) for the last 15 years... I was happy there. Now, I'm just looking for a new job opportunity and doing what's necessary to keep my job.
I guess you could say that I'm not the most effective problem solver or creator anymore.
(Score: 2) by Daniel Dvorkin on Tuesday March 11 2014, @10:51PM
How does your experience contradict the study?
Pipedot [pipedot.org]:Soylent [dev.soylentnews.org]::BSD:Linux
(Score: 5, Insightful) by prospectacle on Tuesday March 11 2014, @11:03PM
Open plan offices create tangible, measurable savings (office-space per employee), and they create larger, more serious losses (mental-productivity per employee, job satisfaction, etc), which aren't as tangible or measurable.
What kind of person would this appeal to? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:06PM
"(office-space per employee)"
Is that necessarily true? I've seen some huge sweeping spread out loud open plans and some tiny, but quiet, little rabbit warrens of quiet little cubicles.
I've worked in both environments. I got a lot more done in my quiet 6x6 cube than in a 16x32 open plan shared with eight other guys.
I think the office spare per employee can be nearly constant other than crazy extremes. It is possible to roll changes in that ratio along with changes in style.
Its like width of cars. Yes there are wider and narrower cars. And there are styles of cars which tend wider or narrower. Yet the width of the car is a very small contributor to the total cost of a certain style of car. Length is probably slightly more correlated.
"We're implementing a new style. Along with continuing the trend of packing them in like sweatshop workers."
Is the recent open plan fad so dense that you're literally rubbing elbows? That might be my confusion. There's no way I could possibly work under conditions like that.
(Score: 2) by githaron on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:13PM
Happiness is different things for different people.