Open office is giving you secondhand ADHD(floustate.com)
floustate.com
Open office is giving you secondhand ADHD
https://floustate.com/blog/open-office-secondhand-adhd
83 comments
This isn't what ADHD is, and I don't think it's helpful to promote the misuse of medical terms.
Just say "distraction."
Just say "distraction."
ADHD and ADD have been rolled into one diagnosis: ADHD. There's Predominately Inattentive (PI) [which you might see as ADD] and Predominately Hyperactive-Impulsive (HI).
This is my experience with ADHD - PI
This is my experience with ADHD - PI
That’s not what they mean. ADHD is a legitimate and sometimes debilitating disability that involves significantly more than being distracted, and distraction is not even really the right word for ADHD
It's not 2023 anymore. We have gone back to not caring about other's feelings
This might come as a big surprise, but not all our feelings are worth caring.
You feel anxious because work and personal life are at odds? That's worth caring, sure.
You feel anxious because you've deliberately neglected soft skills needed to interact with other people? That's barely worth caring for.
You feel threatened because your boss is someone you consider inherenthly inferior? That's so not worth caring for.
You feel anxious because work and personal life are at odds? That's worth caring, sure.
You feel anxious because you've deliberately neglected soft skills needed to interact with other people? That's barely worth caring for.
You feel threatened because your boss is someone you consider inherenthly inferior? That's so not worth caring for.
Thats why I use LibreOffice instead
Haha, came here for that comment... So, what would the Libre Office floor plan look like?!
A standalone office in your home liberated of the other offices. A libre office
Your own private space with self picked office equipment, one door to your kitchen, another to your own toilet, and a "personal favorites" snacks cabinet, and one to the dog and directly outside. Openable window at ~1 m.
LibreOffice commits help me with me ADHD.
Open Offices as in open space, not Open Office as in Microsoft Office.
Then the post title should use the plural
shredswap(1)
Did they account for the "usefulness" of the code produced.
In my company, one problem is that developers produce internal tools that do not correspond to what other employees need. It is even worse when developers are more distant from the users and don't socialize with them.
The "creativity" can increase, it does not mean that it is a good thing if they invent things that are not what people need.
How do they measure that?
In my company, one problem is that developers produce internal tools that do not correspond to what other employees need. It is even worse when developers are more distant from the users and don't socialize with them.
The "creativity" can increase, it does not mean that it is a good thing if they invent things that are not what people need.
How do they measure that?
This is the same developer working on the same project for the comparison so I don’t think it needs to be measured?
Not sure I understand. My point is that "having devs being more creative" does not always mean it is a good thing. If the dev is creating more inventive code that solves what they incorrectly think is the problem while not solving the real problem, then it is a waste of time and money.
I'm sure that, obviously, the dev is convinced that their inventivity is genius and solves the problem. But we need someone else, impartial, to estimate if the amount of code is worth it.
I'm sure that, obviously, the dev is convinced that their inventivity is genius and solves the problem. But we need someone else, impartial, to estimate if the amount of code is worth it.
I find it incredibly hard to believe a 2% debugging share in any scenario. Considering this is an ad post for Floustate, I have serious reservations about these numbers.
Oh, but if only you really knew what it was like to have ADHD. Try living in a world where you are constantly distracted whilst simultaneously having periods of intense hyperfocus. Add to that a lack of ability to see social cues and having to constantly second guess your behaviour, often well after the fact.
Now tell me you have "second hand ADHD".
Now tell me you have "second hand ADHD".
Don’t forget the time blindness. Six hours of hyperfocus feels identical in retrospect to me to a five-minute tangent.
Oh god. Yes, the time blindness is a killer.
The last thing I did yesterday before leaving for the day was make my employee open a change record for the weekend. Why? Because between in-person and virtual interruptions I literally could not get my work done. Tomorrow, I'll make my employer pay CBRE hundreds of dollars for off-hour cooling so I can sit (hopefully) undisturbed and finish.
Nobody is winning in this scenario; I'm losing weekend time to play catch-up, my employer is spending money on AC that could have been saved if people took "no meeting Fridays" seriously, and "no meetings" needs to include teams, symphony, slack, whatever. Like having an office would be grand, but having solid time to concentrate and work is the real issue.
Nobody is winning in this scenario; I'm losing weekend time to play catch-up, my employer is spending money on AC that could have been saved if people took "no meeting Fridays" seriously, and "no meetings" needs to include teams, symphony, slack, whatever. Like having an office would be grand, but having solid time to concentrate and work is the real issue.
Meetings are still work, do you not have the ability to say "this feature is coming later than expected because last week I was inundated with meetings"?
I do not.
Next year marks 20 years that I started to code for money. I've been working from home for about 5 or 6 years of those.
I'm in my mid 30's so this industry is all I've ever known, but if it ever shifts such that the expectation of being in an office is something I'd have to deal with, I'd literally change careers.
I'm in my mid 30's so this industry is all I've ever known, but if it ever shifts such that the expectation of being in an office is something I'd have to deal with, I'd literally change careers.
I find that this is a pretty hard comparison to draw from person to person. Everyone everyone’s offices are different, even in an open office concept and everyone’s home environments are different. Kids, significant others, pets, errands, chores… they can all affect distractions at home, just the same as a chatty coworker.
There is no such thing as "secondhand ADHD", just as like there is no secondhand autism or secondhand broken legs. ADHD is a chronic, genetically determined, serious, incurable and sometimes fatal disease (about 6-8% suicide rates, and a very high probability to end up in prison).
The open office interruptions are your job too. Not just churning tickets.
(Not to say that focus time isn't important - but its not one or the other.)
(Not to say that focus time isn't important - but its not one or the other.)
You have to give it to employers, not only the pay is typically sub par, they also make it extra difficult to do the work.
You can say a lot about software engineering jobs, but "sub par pay" is not one of them. Even in LCOL areas.
People say engineers aren’t underpaid because they compare it to teachers or nurses. That’s the wrong lens. The right comparison is what you generate vs. what you keep.
Your £150k package looks generous until you realise the features you ship spin off tens or hundreds of millions. You’re not “well paid,” you’re just a cheap cog in an insanely profitable machine. The gap between your salary and the wealth you produce is corporate rent extraction on an industrial scale.
And the “high” salary is an illusion anyway:
Housing costs are inflated by the same capital paying your wages, so you hand it straight back to landlords.
Equity comp is handcuffs, not ownership.
Burnout churn keeps you replaceable.
You don’t own the thing you built, you don’t share in the upside, and when the cycle turns you’ll be tossed overboard with a “transition package.” That’s not wealth - that’s rations.
Tech wages only look high because every other profession has already been strip-mined. Relative to the value you generate, you are drastically underpaid. That’s why companies can shower 100k engineers with “luxury” salaries and still post record profits.
Your £150k package looks generous until you realise the features you ship spin off tens or hundreds of millions. You’re not “well paid,” you’re just a cheap cog in an insanely profitable machine. The gap between your salary and the wealth you produce is corporate rent extraction on an industrial scale.
And the “high” salary is an illusion anyway:
Housing costs are inflated by the same capital paying your wages, so you hand it straight back to landlords.
Equity comp is handcuffs, not ownership.
Burnout churn keeps you replaceable.
You don’t own the thing you built, you don’t share in the upside, and when the cycle turns you’ll be tossed overboard with a “transition package.” That’s not wealth - that’s rations.
Tech wages only look high because every other profession has already been strip-mined. Relative to the value you generate, you are drastically underpaid. That’s why companies can shower 100k engineers with “luxury” salaries and still post record profits.
Those employers value loyalty and politics more than productivity. If you know that, you will get frustrated les
This is an interesting line of thinking. Are you suggesting that all emergent qualities of office life are effectively desired outcome and thus should be treated as part of the job description?
I have my own idea on the matter, but I want to see what you think.
I have my own idea on the matter, but I want to see what you think.
Been working from home for about 9 years and I’m not sure I’d ever be able to go back. It would be such a huge step backwards for actual performance (though I’d probably look a lot busier with all those meetings and syncs and presence)
Looks like we're in adjacent fields. How do you manage to keep the productivity higher than in an office? I've always worked for companies that do hardware and I find it more difficult remotely for fairly obvious reasons.
Yeah, exactly. I do software. In fact, I mainly do software for remote use of robots. So in a way, being remote just brings me closer to my users’ experiences.
This reads similarly to the issues I encounter within my company.
The real issue here is that you're getting distracted by everything. That happens in my production environment, too. The fact that isolation improves your productivity isn't exclusively an effect of being at home. You are not being allowed to organize and keep on track and on task with the distractions, as you so record in your data. When people on the production line in my company get distracted, problems occur. Thus I try to make sure absolutely nothing can go wrong when they start a job up, and leave no reason for others to come around to cause or create a distraction. The only times anyone should be getting distracted or called upon is first article or final inspection, and that's (usually) it. Every other person has set tasks and I'll give them some slack time on the line so they don't have their brains clock out on the monotony of some of the highly-repetitive tasks and thus generate mistakes.
Since I walked into the company 5 years ago, production has increased roughly an order of magnitude. Just let your employees work undistracted and without stupid meetings that do nothing for their productivity, and reap the benefits.
Or you can just succumb to Agile and be non-productive beyond belief. Yea that was the first thing to go when I walked in the door.
The real issue here is that you're getting distracted by everything. That happens in my production environment, too. The fact that isolation improves your productivity isn't exclusively an effect of being at home. You are not being allowed to organize and keep on track and on task with the distractions, as you so record in your data. When people on the production line in my company get distracted, problems occur. Thus I try to make sure absolutely nothing can go wrong when they start a job up, and leave no reason for others to come around to cause or create a distraction. The only times anyone should be getting distracted or called upon is first article or final inspection, and that's (usually) it. Every other person has set tasks and I'll give them some slack time on the line so they don't have their brains clock out on the monotony of some of the highly-repetitive tasks and thus generate mistakes.
Since I walked into the company 5 years ago, production has increased roughly an order of magnitude. Just let your employees work undistracted and without stupid meetings that do nothing for their productivity, and reap the benefits.
Or you can just succumb to Agile and be non-productive beyond belief. Yea that was the first thing to go when I walked in the door.
I completely agree with author. I am a development manager at a small software company (30 people) and what I have done to regain my productivity is to work focused from 8 to 11 am, in a empty hotel lobby, isolated from distractions, and have meetings with my team in the afternoon, having a contact channel in case of an emergency.
I come into the office super early. Camp in the focus room. Stay for the minimum number of hours required, and then leave, working the rest of the day from home.
I think open offices are great for socialising with coworkers (which is important at least for remote first companies) and for doing shallow work, but it totally won't work when you want to focus and do deep work.
A solution (given that management and the team at large understands how this situation is a problem) is to combine the open office with some deep work rooms or if there are no rooms, sound proof pods (eg. from Framery)
A solution (given that management and the team at large understands how this situation is a problem) is to combine the open office with some deep work rooms or if there are no rooms, sound proof pods (eg. from Framery)
Oh I though they meant OpenOffice™ as in the software
This is why I use LibreOffice: no ADHD
Me too!
clickbait
For me best would be "right room(and tool) for the right job". If I want to program alone, I focus a lot better at home. Running "social_program.exe" in the background in my brain eats a lot of focus in office. Just being aware that there are others nearby is enough.
However, sometimes I need to talk, design or pair-program. For that I enjoy the office.
However, sometimes I need to talk, design or pair-program. For that I enjoy the office.
Noise cancelling headphones, focused stare, code editors open on all screens.
No one comes near me unless absolutely necessary
No one comes near me unless absolutely necessary
As a consultant had to work in some insane open office environments, including ones where the sales people are on the phone constantly, well within earshot of the engineering team. I used in ear monitors with aftermarket foam tips. Very effective. I also had the experience of a client CEO, and the director reports, standing behind me, and one more junior person tasked with waving their hand in front of my face to get my attention.
So much this. Humans are inherently social animals, and if you look like you’re focused and working, most people will respect that. The headphones are also an immediate signal that you’d prefer to be left alone. In my experience, only people facing a rather serious and pressing problem will interrupt you in that situation, “hey sorry to bother you, but X just went offline without an alert”
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> I've been tracking my coding for a month using FlouState. In the office, I create new code 18% of the time. At home? 56%.
If I were able to write new code 56% of the time - or 18%, for that matter - nothing would be being my grasp.
If I were able to write new code 56% of the time - or 18%, for that matter - nothing would be being my grasp.
I'm no fan of open plan offices but the generalization from "me" to you" is a huge leap and not warranted by the sample-size-one experiment.
Maybe if you have a ton of distractions at the office, your current tasks frequently need intense focus, and you can actually get work done at home without talking to people directly, then you'd be better at home. That's not true for everybody everywhere all the time. If we're generalizing from one sample, then I for one actually don't have a ton of distractions at my open plan office, and I love to be able to talk to my coworkers once in a while. I don't usually get more work done or even enjoy doing it more at home, except in some rare scenarios. I still dislike the open plan office, but this isn't why. And the alternative I find better is an actual shared room office (where the supposed "threats" are presumably still there?), not being at home.
Maybe if you have a ton of distractions at the office, your current tasks frequently need intense focus, and you can actually get work done at home without talking to people directly, then you'd be better at home. That's not true for everybody everywhere all the time. If we're generalizing from one sample, then I for one actually don't have a ton of distractions at my open plan office, and I love to be able to talk to my coworkers once in a while. I don't usually get more work done or even enjoy doing it more at home, except in some rare scenarios. I still dislike the open plan office, but this isn't why. And the alternative I find better is an actual shared room office (where the supposed "threats" are presumably still there?), not being at home.
I thought this would be about OpenOffice.
Those small interruptions are actually a godsend of hunger for working harder and demanding more.
I get bored working alone. A narcissistic individual like me needs someone to compare himself with to feel good, or to feel like there is something to accomplish that I have not achieved yet. I remember in uni we used to learn a lot from each other because of how open the conversation was .
I get bored working alone. A narcissistic individual like me needs someone to compare himself with to feel good, or to feel like there is something to accomplish that I have not achieved yet. I remember in uni we used to learn a lot from each other because of how open the conversation was .
the real problem is two people
in the office who have to talk
This article had a bit more ChatGPT in it than I needed, especially the second half.
But yeah, the core issue here isn't really the office, it's attention and concentration. I recently read James Clear's Atomic Habits and am now about halfway through Cal Newport's Deep Work.
I think all developers should read these two books in order to gain an understanding of the psychology of concentration. The TLDR is simply that it's hard to stay focused, minor distractions cost you more productivity than you think, and the effect is even cumulative over long periods of time.
There's lots of research on the topic and there are many ways to address the problem. They all fundamentally relate to carving out time for working without distractions, as much and as routinely as possible.
But yeah, the core issue here isn't really the office, it's attention and concentration. I recently read James Clear's Atomic Habits and am now about halfway through Cal Newport's Deep Work.
I think all developers should read these two books in order to gain an understanding of the psychology of concentration. The TLDR is simply that it's hard to stay focused, minor distractions cost you more productivity than you think, and the effect is even cumulative over long periods of time.
There's lots of research on the topic and there are many ways to address the problem. They all fundamentally relate to carving out time for working without distractions, as much and as routinely as possible.
No idea how you got that from Atomic Habits. Shockingly unscientific book.
It's basically a long form linkedin article.
Someone with ADHD is unlikely going to survive more than a few pages of those books.
I'd say even getting a gist on something like Blinkist is a push.
I'd say even getting a gist on something like Blinkist is a push.
What do you mean? You think people with ADHD are unable to read a book...?
I mean if you are a programmer, and you've thrown in the towel on reading books, I don't know what to say. You may as well throw in the towel on being a good programmer as well. Has "reading books is a good idea" become an unpopular idea in 2025? I wouldn't be surprised if it has, but I think this is a really bad take
Not sure where you got that from. I simply stated a fact of life for many with ADHD. It's like saying to a person without legs that they have given up on walking.
Reading a book != being good either. If you already have strong foundations and intuition, many books become just noise and don't add anything meaningful (and also a reason why person with ADHD can tune out quickly).
Reading a book != being good either. If you already have strong foundations and intuition, many books become just noise and don't add anything meaningful (and also a reason why person with ADHD can tune out quickly).
Why do you say that? ADHD doesn't make us stupid, you know.
What’s the point of this? If you begin to think about how terrible RTO + sitting in a sea of 200 people is, you’ll drive yourself mad.
The people in charge want you to idle chat more and churn out work less. Why fight it.
The people in charge want you to idle chat more and churn out work less. Why fight it.
Why do anything at all? If I value autonomy, I optimize for it. I will say this though. Our leadership's recent push for RTO ( and they openly said 'market changed' suggesting they think they can get away with it ) made us immediately looking for the doors.
They want to optimize for chatter, they won't have stuff done. And some stuff needs being done.
They want to optimize for chatter, they won't have stuff done. And some stuff needs being done.
Nothing needs to get done. You are not your company. If they want to pay you to stare at the wall for 8 hours a day, that’s your job.
This is clearly done by AI and I am disinclined to draw any conclusions from the anecdotes or data here because it all feels "synthesized".
“I'm 3x more creative at home than in the office”
I think you mean “productive” (and even that would be arguable).
I think you mean “productive” (and even that would be arguable).
The company is selling a productivity tracking software so of course conflict of interests apply. But it's not hard to see how these interruption drag down your focus.
I think you shouldn't presume to know better than the author what they meant.
Creativity is often the result of experience having been applied to time with a problem. If you have no time with a problem due to constant interruptions and distractions, your creative output is likely to diminish.
> This isn't about being “less productive” in the office. The data reveals something far more disturbing: I literally become a different developer.
> This isn't about being “less productive” in the office
proceeds to spend entire article detailing how you're less productive
> I literally become a different developer
I don't see how... unless you're conflating productivity with somehow being a different person?
The whole thing is just a thinly-veiled product shill from the company itself IMO. I don't think it takes some proprietary software to tell most of us that distractions make it harder to focus?
proceeds to spend entire article detailing how you're less productive
> I literally become a different developer
I don't see how... unless you're conflating productivity with somehow being a different person?
The whole thing is just a thinly-veiled product shill from the company itself IMO. I don't think it takes some proprietary software to tell most of us that distractions make it harder to focus?
The VP Eng would always say "I always try to remember it costs the company over a hundred dollars for me open one of these doors."
I learned so much from that boss.