undefined | Better HN

0 pointslotyrin13y ago0 comments

Times when I've been put in a war room were absolutely infuriating for me, but the tighter loops in bringing people in on what you're doing got the "why not just do X" questions answered much faster. As much as I disliked the interruption, I'm more thankful for all the code that didn't get written because we talked it over first.

If I were to estimate, this probably doubled efficacy of our junior devs while halving the (direct) productivity of senior folks. In my cases, it was immediately apparent that we came out ahead: the former outnumbered the latter by several times.

0 comments

2 comments · 2 top-level

adrianhoward13y ago

This pretty much matches my experiences. I went from a sceptic to a believer in co-located team rooms after seeing this a few times.

Did you also see the incidence of "bad" interruptions drop as the team got more experienced? That's what I've seen pretty much every time I've worked in this sort of environment.

cloverich13y ago

> If I were to estimate, this probably doubled efficacy of our junior devs while halving the (direct) productivity of senior folks. In my cases, it was immediately apparent that we came out ahead: the former outnumbered the latter by several times.

I really like this. I consider myself an intermediate developer, and can't even count the times a 5-10 minute conversation would have saved me an entire day - or week! - of wasted effort. I think this is easily overlooked because its not totally obvious that interrupting a highly productive, highly skilled developer could result in higher team productivity.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse