Office cubicles - the non-social medium

I sit with my back to the people I work with - I am sick of this!

When people visit my "office" they enter the cubicle from behind; some are so "well mannered" that they "hover" because they don't want to disturb me. Hey, news flash - having someone hovering in the background is really, really disturbing.

I work as a technical writer in an IT development environment. Often I think I’d like a quiet space with no interruptions, but sooner rather than later, I need to get up and talk to someone – that is, creep up behind them with my list of questions. Now we have email and instant messaging to keep in touch, but we have had to create rules and "netiquette" to dictate how and when we can contact each other in this social world.  Many people plant headphones on to avoid distractions – that kind of body language sends a pretty clear message. Are we really more interactive and social nowadays?

Teams are heading towards a more "agile" style of development where a key feature is daily meetings. If the morning meeting is the only aspect of agile you adopt you are still doing well – the communication between people on the same project is crucial for success.

I suspect a new arrangement of the office furniture might go a long way towards improving communication. Several years ago I worked at a stock broking firm - the brokers all sat either side of a very long table with their screens full of data down the middle. They faced each other. If they needed to talk to someone it was really easy to catch their eye. This worked.

Way back in the day before we all had computers on our desks I worked in an office where we arranged ourselves with our backs to the wall and we could face each other across the room – yes, we were developers (coding onto data sheets for punch cards). We still had a quiet space each, but contact was easy.

I sometimes think the current cubicle world is arranged the way it is because it is much easier to set up the cabling needed. I’d like to remove the cubicle walls and turn the desks around – technicians will need to come up with a new cabling diagram but this is achievable. We can still work quietly, but chat more quickly if necessary. People who don’t want to be disturbed can still stick their headphones on. This could go along way to reducing the amount of mis-communication.