Ask HN: How do you know if you're burnt out or just being lazy? - <AUTHOR> I know the easy answer to my question is "just take a rest and don't think about it," but how would you really know? Do you have a personal acid test to know if you're really tired or just plain undisciplined? <comment><USER3> First, check the essentials: Are you sleeping, eating decent food, and exercising regularly? If not, you may be neither burnt out nor lazy. Take care of this stuff first.

Second, have you spent the last year working so hard that nothing short of a physical illness will make you slow down? Do you regularly push through problems with sheer willpower? Do you crave the next "green" unit test result beyond all sanity?

If so, you're almost certainly burnt out. _Don't_ try to push through it. Take a vacation. Get outside. Allow yourself to be distracted by a pointless and amusing hobby for a month. You can't fix burnout with willpower. You need to take time off and refresh.

If you haven't been mistreating your body, and you haven't been pushing yourself too hard for too long, then it's possible you're lazy, or depressed, or something else. If you think you might be lazy, commit to making some useful progress every morning for 30 days, no exceptions. Or try a Pomodoro timer. These might be enough to tip you over the edge and get you moving. But don't do this until you've ruled out burnout, because it will only dig you in deeper.

<comment><USER4> What you describe there is laziness. Burnout is this weird concept that developers have invented to describe "I can't be bothered to keep going". 5 years, no days off, one 5 day holiday per year, on call 24/7 for the duration, and I'm just fine. Depressed and exhausted, yes, but the work keeps flowing in and the code keeps flowing out, which is all that matters.

I guess what I'm getting at is that people have forgotten that work is _supposed_ to be hard. You're _supposed_ to work your nuts off until you lose all track of time. "Free time" is a misnomer, because every moment that you're not working, you're costing yourself time, and time is precious, and should therefore be spent working.

If you can't hack back-to-back 80+ hour weeks, you need to keep throwing yourself into them until you can.

<comment><USER5> _Depressed and exhausted, yes, but the work keeps flowing in and the code keeps flowing out_

You call that just fine? This is not fine. This is not healthy and this is the attitude you should be fighting against. If you honestly think that you are a better person and you produce your best work when you're exhausted and depressed, you should probably get some other opinions on that, because I have a strong feeling that the people around you will disagree - whether that's co- workers or family members.

<comment><USER4> It's fine once you adjust your value system to recognise that work is life, and that everything else is basically irrelevant. No family to speak of (apart from the ones who expect a monthly cheque from me (brother, aunt, mother)), co-workers are employees, so not appropriate for me to talk about it with them!

<comment><USER6> This has to be a well-executed joke...

Or someone who has severely lost track of perspective.

You know it's done well when you really can't tell.

<comment><USER7> My interpretation is that he's too shy to ask for help. Most manic depressants are just that, depressed, they hide in their hole and someone has to dig them out (possibly themselves).

Posting self-loathing material is subtle for someone to come along and pick up their shoulders. They know what they're doing is unhealthy or irregular but won't outright admit it because it shows weakness. "My life sucks but I march on and continue to produce acceptable deliverables" is a pride thing.

tl;dr - start slowly, admit that you can improve your life and STILL churn out those code snippets and you'll find yourself happier!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I saw an interesting human-interest piece on TV over the weekend. It was about one of the cofounders of Cisco. She lives on an 800-acre farm and spends her time being a farmer.

The reporter asked her about her 40-room mansion. What's it like to live there?

She said, "I don't know. I never live there. I live in an old wooden cabin in the woods"

This led to a cute exchange: "Are you eccentric?

"Yes, I am, but only because I have money. Before I was just weird"

I was laughing when she hit me with the real punch line. "I find that if I stay active, _thinking_ , struggling with problems that I am the most happy"

I think a lot of what we might call "lazy" or "burnt-out" is really low-level depression. Are you struggling, thinking, actively engaging in some problem that you love? If so, the words "work" or "lazy" doesn't really mean much. If not, then can you allocate some part of your life where you are?

There's nothing wrong with not wanting to do things you don't like doing. The real question is whether you can engage yourself to _struggle_ and _think_ with some part of life that you encounter. If so, then do that. If not, then that sounds a lot like being depressed to me.

<comment><USER9> > "Yes, I am, but only because I have money. Before I was just weird"

Not sure about the history of this woman but I am sure that she didn't inherit the money, she made it.

<comment><USER10> Daniel made no indication that she inherited it or otherwise didn't earn it.

<comment><USER9> That particular statement reflects a lot of experience and maturity and I was just appreciating that. Nothing to do with Daniel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Burnout is not solved by a nap or a walk, a burn out is not just being tired or saturated with a subject.

You are burnt when you pushed your limits over a long period of time without giving your body and brain enough rest. This means you do not have a quick fix. You cannot quick fix something you have done over months, years. It takes time.

In my personal case, I suffered a burn out (went several times to the doctor, hospital and specialists with scans etc.), because without even be aware of it I was pushing above my limits. I am still suffering from Tinnitus because of it, 2 months after clearing all the other problems.

I was pushing above my limits because it was a bit above but in all parts of my life. A stressful year, then when everything went back to normality, I was simply left smashed. I was annoyed because I finally reached the "life is good again" state, but my body simply said: "you gave me a hard time for a year, now I need to rest". This started end of August, I am still recovering so to speak.

So, you feel it could be a burn out? Take a close look at your life, what is not running as it should, then act. But again, no quick fix, it takes time.

Do not hesitate to contact me privately if you want/need.

<comment><USER12> This corroborate what I have seen happen in the CTO I had a few years ago. He worked 5 years without rest. Was called by big boss in Sunday mornings to fix things. Was a very sanguine type, shout on everyone for nothing, said no to everything. All lines of code were either quick fixes or copy paste. Absolutely not long-term view. Database tables had 300 columns, named like event1, event1time, event1who, event2, event2time, etc.

He had a team of 10 interns and only one regular, and no interns would stay. He also had a specific way to breathe, like when you suffocate after 25 meters under the water in the pool.

He was so overwhelmed he grabbed a few set of random rules as his life buoys. For instance, use of <div>s was forbidden because once a <div> did float badly when resized. So we had pages with over 20 nested <table> and not one had a raison d'être.

Then he got mad against the big boss, and I replaced him. Result: he was sick for 6 months. His body had to take a revenge.

I believe he is still looking for a job.

Maybe this could be a counter-point to the guy above saying that only work is important, and that all seconds spent not working or sleeping are lost. I think it is a dangerous way to dispose of your life.

Moreover, if the goal is to succeed, I think it is wrong that all "great achievers" are necessarily 100% focused on their one tasks. Many of them actually had hobbies, and a very wide and deep general knowledge of Humanities (which can only be gathered through extensive reading).

So I would say to the OP, just stop focusing, read books, try for example "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", feed your "gumption". (And go fishing!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Personally, I take issue with the entire "lazy" thing. I find most people who talk about laziness are using it as a way to avoid thinking deeply about their own motivation.

"I am not getting work done, even though I want to. What aspects of this work are bringing me down? Do I have the resources to do this work properly? Can I think of any ways to make the work more appealing? Can I combine it with anything else that I enjoy, like by getting a friend/colleague to look at it? Should I take a break from it and come back to it later? Should I consider dropping the project entirely? Is it actually what I want to do?"

Or "I'm lazy, I should work harder."

I strongly believe that the idea of laziness leads to burnout. Every time you force yourself to do something, you're using up a little bit of your willpower. It's a stopgap, not a strategy, and it does run out if overused.

The primary engine that generates results in your life should be based on aligning your desires, goals, resources and actions. Good self-management looks like good management of others, and I've never heard of a good manager who calls his employees lazy.

The problem with asking about burn-out is that it's a spectrum. Life is full of little "just push through" moments: approaching a stranger, hanging out your washing, sitting down at your desk without opening reddit, being bothered to cook, not deleting your nearly-written comment. Any time you can't do it, your willpower has failed you. If you don't stop to understand why, it will keep happening. And get worse.

For me it started small: missing appointments, not eating well, finding it hard to get through my to-do list, even easy decisions got slowly harder to make. Ideally burnout is kind of self-regulating because as your productivity decreases your opportunities decrease as well. Unfortunately I was organising an event and getting less done only meant having more to do.

Afterwards... it's hard to describe, but even considering any kind of executive function felt like a cross between lifting a car and hearing a burglar walk up the stairs. I don't think I got out of bed for a couple of weeks, and I didn't show up to an Easter lunch with my family because figuring out which train to catch was too hard. Things got better slowly - <USER2> about nine months in all before I really felt right again.

Since then, I've made it a point to think long and hard when I get that "just gotta keep pushing" feeling. Almost every time it's been preventable: the result of poor decisions, overcommitment, badly organised work, lack of reward, or just plain doing something I don't actually want to do. If you're feeling something like that, make "I might be doing this wrong" your first port of call, and only go to "I should work harder!" later.

<comment><USER14> Wow. I've been going through something very similar to what you've just described, and this has really put it in perspective. I starting to realize that might my previous reasons for wanting to accomplish certain things aren't really good enough motivators for me and that I need to redefine my goals or realize why I'm truly doing what I'm doing. Thank you, seriously. I'm going to be linking this to more than a couple folks.

As an aside, your comment about Reddit really hit the nail on the head. I've been trying to slowly phase it out of my life, and HN has filled that void without being such a constantly changing time sink. Not to mention that most of the stuff here motivates me and gets me accepted about CS, IT, and entrepreneurial stuff. Glad to hear you got it all figured out, though.

<comment><USER15> in a few months you'll also come to regard hn as a complete time sink

<comment><USER16> already did. daily hacker news saved it. www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you have to ask yourself this question, I think there's a chance you might be suffering from the kind of self-esteem issues that often plague bright people. Take a peek at this Wikipedia article on the "Dunning Kruger Effect" to have an idea of what I'm referring to.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

Have you generally been a hard working person your whole life but are now going through a tough spell where it's hard to find motivation? If that's the case you __may __be burnt out, or perhaps you are working on something that deep down inside you don't really believe in. Maybe you need to listen to that intuition, rather than beat yourself up and think "I'm the problem because I'm lazy."

I went through a pretty major burnout cycle in my career a few years back and was lucky enough to be able to afford to take a lot of time off - nearly two years - and dedicate it to just working on open source. Nearly 3 years later I suspect that financially it was a poor decision: I'm still majorly suffering the consequences of that lack of income for 2 years. But I was able to recover my passion for work and now have a job that I'm enthusiastic about, and willing to work my ass off for, even though it pays less than I had been making before.

At the time I quit my job I wrote a short post on it, take a peek and see if it resonates at all. If it does, you're most certainly _not_ lazy.

[http://njclarke.com/posts/why-i-quit-my-job-to-work-on- open-...](http://njclarke.com/posts/why-i-quit-my-job-to-work-on-open- source.html)

<comment><USER18> I didn't know that Dunning-Kruger effect, but it seems quite interesting! Thanks for the sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would say that burnout is about not caring. About not finding enjoyment and satisfaction in the work that you previously did. If you find yourself reacting with far less enthusiasm to the same sorts of tasks that in the past you found exciting and interesting that could be a big sign of burnout.

Burnout is about stress and not necessarily about "overwork". You can get burnt out on a 40 hour a week job or even on a 10 hour a week job. Spending a half of your waking hours every weekday immersed in an ocean of stress is quite sufficient to screw your brain up and burn you out. Software development can quite easily be (and is typically) a very highly stressful job. On top of the normal stresses of coding you have the typical saga of trying to determine and meet the right specs, you have the drama of trying to chase bugs around at the same time you're trying to get work done, and you have immense schedule uncertainty and schedule pressure on top of everything. And that's the average case.

My advice, for whatever it's worth, is to try to find a way to reduce your stress as much as possible. Maybe find a position with less responsibilities that pays well enough. Then spend your free time slowly re-acquiring a passion for tech by taking on small, highly rewarding projects.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think if you can't do the things you love then you're probably burnt out.

If all you want to do are the things you like then you're probably being lazy.

Not fool proof - but a starting indicator.

<comment><USER21> I think this is the best answer so far, if the things you used to love don't satisfy you the way they did, you're probably burnt out. If, on the other hand, your not meeting your own expectations stems from screwing up priorities (avoiding what you don't enjoy), you're likely just being lazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Short answer? Go see a Psychologist. I know a lot of people are naturally averse to this (I was, at one point) but I've realised that a good psychologist is really just a good hacker - someone who's read a lot on the subject at hand (personality and the psyche), is motivated to help you, enjoys it, and has found a way to make money doing so.

In one hour with a good psychologist, they will generally be able to give you very good guidance on what you are feeling. It's not magic, it's just the power of having an informed, objective observer in a situation that encourages you to be open.

Otherwise, ask the people closest to you - your spouse, GF/BF, etc.

</comment><comment><USER23> A lot of the answers are subective, that's b/c, as individuals, our tolerances vary so much. So regardless of what we say, you're still likely to experience burn out (if you haven't already). I know when I'm burned out when I have no motivation to sit in front of my computer. Unfortunately, the last time I felt that way I quit my high paying job and spent the next several months in a horrible place - mentally, physically, and emotionally. So at some point you'll realize your personal limits. With that said, my reason for posting isn't in regard to the _before_ part, but rather the _after_ \- I've found that once you experience burn out, you're more susceptible to it in the future.

That's usually a bad thing; obviously you won't want to experience burn out again. However, sometimes it can have a positive yield in the long run. I've found that after my burn out experience, I've raised the bar in terms of the type of work I'm willing to do and how much crap I put up with. For example, I've always been passionate about home-run level customer service. As a consultant, that belief usually meant that I bent backwards anytime a client asked me to. I still have that belief today, but I tend to push back if they ask me to do things I won't be happy maintaining for the life of their product, or if it'll involve trying to hit an unrealistic time line, etc. So post burn out, I'm definitely more protective of my limits and happiness, I just wish I would've been this way sooner.

</comment><comment><USER24> lazy: procrastinating an activity with something that is more fun

burnt-out: no activity provides enough fun to procrastinate the current activity

</comment><comment><USER25> If you have to ask this, you are burnt out. If you were lazy, you wouldn't ask.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a great question. For me, my "acid test" would be: "is the task that I feel like doing now DIRECTLY related to my goals/projects/objectives?". Several successive "no's" over a long period (like constant "no's" over a few days or weeks) MAY indicate burn-out. A few successive "no's" in isolation MAY indicate laziness, or it may indicate that you're just not in the right state of mind to be doing the particular task you've assigned to yourself.

It's worth mentioning that it's very important to consider energy levels too. Not all tasks are equal, so for instance, it'd a be a silly idea to embark on a 3-4 hour coding binge at 1am, when I know that if I had a good sleep and was wide awake, I could get the same work done in maybe 1-2 hours with a higher level of quality. I'll do some lower energy work instead, or I might even decide to call it quits for a day, wind down and just read a book - and I wouldn't consider it laziness at all. At all costs, I want to keep the quality of work up - even if it means not doing it right now. I know myself, and I trust myself that I'll get up the next morning and hack and slash away in a much better state of mind, and produce better quality work (most of the time!)

For me, forcing myself to do work that my mind just isn't in the state to do is a fast path to fatigue, unproductiveness, burn-out and "far out there's not enough time in a day, the universe is against me!"-type delusions.

</comment><comment><USER27> Make sure you're healthy, if it's an issue with you.

I was fired for being slow. I was falling asleep at inappropriate times, and was generally feeling stupid, to the point that I hated myself for being stupid and lazy. This was particularly hard working in a company that constantly touts the superior abilities of its employees.

When I was finally fired it was an emotional relief. I ultimately got treatment, and I don't feel stupid or lazy anymore, but I haven't fully recovered from being fired.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'll not discuss "burnt out" vs lazy.

However I have met the brick wall with a certain amount of velocity myself (12 years ago and counting) and I think the difference between being too tired too work (literally falling asleep at work, throat thickens, certain parts of you body starts acting on their own, dreaming with eyes open etc) and burned out is that the burnt out thing didn't happen until at some point I realized this is not going to work however hard I work. (Coworkers were already preparing for a bankruptcy by stealing from the company.)

A few more details:

      - Wasn't my company but a close relatives.
      - For me the symptoms were: Crying without reason when no one could see me, people asked why I was depressed although I didn't feel that way.
      - What helped me out wasn't no work but rather working at a place were I could get stuff done and take the night off. I worked at a farm with a friend of mine that summer and I was supposed to get paid but I never turned in my time sheets. Instead I have said "thank you" to him a couple of times afterwards : ) And I had free food and a bed.

Since then I have worked hard. Even harder I think (Those symptoms from tiredness that I mentioned above I've expericed later). What has saved me from another burn out is two things:

      - Learning to say "No." when I somebody asks me to do something that is a complete and utter waste of time. And "No." once more if once doesn't cut it.
      - Doing whatever I do to be recognized by God, not humans. (This being HN where even top contributors gets downvoted for mentioning the G word, -feel free to read that in a way that pleases you.  )

</comment><comment><USER29> Unless you're elbows deep in someone's chest cavity during a triple bypass, whatever you're doing can wait. Take a day off, leave your phone and ipad and laptop at home, go somewhere else.

This happens to me every few months. Go do something totally non-technical, simple, and enjoyable. Last week I drove from Chicago up to Wisconsin to enjoy crisp country air, an array of cheeses[] (ack. no technical stuff...) and I got to yell at some sheep. I didn't check my email, text anyone, and I tried desperately not to think about my projects that had me on the verge of a melt- down.

Trust yourself to know; working more/harder is rarely a good choice. If you take a day off and you're still tired and don't want to work, take another day. And another. If, after 2 or 3 days, you're still right where you started, you're probably working on stuff you hate.

If you're just burnt out on working on what you enjoy, a couple days (or even a week) off will make all the difference

</comment><comment><USER30> <http://www.alistapart.com/articles/burnout/>

</comment><comment><USER31> Look for "decision fatigue", it's a theory saying that people who have to make a lot of hard decisions, usually at the end of the day are so tired in their mind that they can't get themselves together to decide anything.

The interesting thing is that it's usually seen in poor and uneducated people, not big bosses that supposedly has to make alot of hard decisions. It's more the "shit, how am i going to pay my rent this month"-questions that tires your mind. The theory was that because their minds, unconsciously, are so hogged up with these questions they can't get themselves together and change job, start studying, etc and thus get stuck in an evil circle.

Don't know if this applies to you but make sure you have all your basics together before you start diving into more tough areas.

</comment><comment><USER32> It takes energy to be disciplined, and a belief that you're going to get something good out of it.

So burn-out can lead to lack of discipline, both because it saps your energy and because you stop believing that you're going to get something worthwhile out of it.

</comment><comment><USER33> If you don't suffer from chronic depression but are depressed, you may be burnt out. I feel a person starts the cycle of burnout by forgetting that excellence is a habit, not an act. It's easy to fixate on the magnitude of individual iterations of a habitual activity and forget the importance of consistency and sustainability. This common confusion in humans may stem from the fact that our brains evolved to optimize for short-term rewards and respond only to short-term danger. The magnitude of your individual actions is trivial compared to how often you act.

My simple productivity hack: _be happy with doing less--but very frequently and very well._

</comment><comment><USER34> This is how to tell the difference between exhaustion and burning out: you get exhausted if you pushed hard, you burn out if you pushed hard for a wrong reason. If someone claims they can fix burn out by taking a walk or a getting a nap, they're not burnt out. You are burnt out when having hard time not just doing your work, but also when trying to recuperate. Basically, that "wrong reason" depresses you, making recovery very hard. If you are lazy due to overall fatigue, the next day you'll go back to work like it never happened; if you burnt out, the "next day" never happens.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you wanted to take a scientific approach you'd need to be able to do something like the following: (A) measure your actual work output and (B) some way of measuring your 'maximum expected output capacity'.

if A much less than B you are being lazy. if A is close to or equal to B then you are burnt out.

[The short answer of course is, if you are reading Hacker News you are being lazy]

As an aside; Pivotal Tracker - the feature / dev tracking software manages to define output using average number of work blocks completed over the past X weeks. How you measure your maximum expected output capacity might be more tricky to define.

</comment><comment><USER36> I know myself, and I'm usually quite disciplined. If I have to ask, I'm burnt out. Are you normally disciplined? If so, then if you have to ask, you probably are burnt out.

Rest isn't enough to deal with burn-out. Something needs to change: work habits may need to change (for example, maintain separation of work of home), change the project you're working on, start another hobby, make an effort to be more social, etc. If you take a week or two off, then come back to the same ol' thing, you'll be in the same place.

</comment><comment><USER37> By whether what you do in your downtime is neutral+ or negative.

<comment><USER38> elaborate?

<comment><USER39> I think the OP means that when you are burned out you can not enjoy you spare time and you can not rest anymore.

<comment><USER37> I actually meant the opposite. As in laziness in work goes hand in hand with laziness in "play". i.e. being burned out from working too hard gives downtime more value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Perhaps you have hit a batch of work to do that mind just can't be convinced is profitable no matter how hard you try?

This might be a personal startup that you know is already defeated, or a client that asks for a never ending series of changes and revisions that you aren't getting paid for, or a well-paying client whose project keeps growing and getting farther and farther from launching?

Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER41> It may be a sign you're not working on the right things. Seriously consider why you don't want to do the work.

It may also be that you're overwhelmed. You can use LazyMeter to focus on one day at a time, and measure your productivity to see if the problem is laziness or signing up for too much. <http://www.lazymeter.com>

</comment><comment><USER42> My own experience suggests you are truly burnt out when you are no longer capable of doing work in the face of dire consequences like missing mortgage repayments and feeding your children.

Of course, this feeds back on itself, with further stress causing even more difficulty in fulfilling one's obligations.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think it starts with one question: Am I dreading sitting down in front of the computer today?

If yes, then you're definitely just burnt out. If the answer is no and you're not producing then you're being lazy.

</comment><comment><USER44> I never really know until it passes. When I'm burned out, I often think I'm being lazy, but when my energy returns, I look back and see that I was really burned out.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think if you are asking yourself that question then you are not truly burnt out. Anyone who's had a serious burnout knows that there is no confusing the two.

</comment><comment><USER46> If you wake up and you're not excited to get started on the challenge(s) that your work will bring, then you're burnt out.

</comment><comment><USER47> Another question to ask yourself is "is this question the right one to ask?" It could represent a false dichotomy.

As animals we're built for a fast effort/reward loop. Look at _most_ people and how they operate -- they desire immediate gratification.

Something that makes us special is the ability to push out that loop and make long term plans. Not everybody is able to do that.

I can count, to the specific decisions, among my friends, what things they decided to do in their lives where they had a choice of a long term plan that would have yielded great fruits, or a short term plan yielding immediate gratification (but with long term problems stemming from that) that ultimately ended up with them being impoverished, without health care, unable to get better jobs, save up for retirement, etc. As an external actor I _know_ exactly where they made those decisions and what they chose instead.

But I can't really blame them or think less of them for how they ended up in their circumstances. They are simply acting the way we as animals are built -- they are acting _normal_.

In every case, I believe that the difference between a long-term planner and an immediate gratification fixer is _willpower_.

Doing something like what many people do here, starting up a company, takes extraordinary long term planning - it's _not_ normal. A simple observation of large groups of humans shows that it's abnormal behavior. It takes mountains of willpower in most cases since we don't see the immediate benefits of what's likely hundreds or thousands (or tens of thousands) of hours of work. The payoff, if there even is one, is an abstraction that even the smartest and most dedicated can have trouble using to reconcile their labors.

What you can try to do instead is find clever hacks to reduce the friction it takes to get a task done. For example, reduce your problem into very small steps. That way you feel a faster reward for your labors -- even if it's just the feeling of accomplishment at getting another step out of the way. Use lots of small arrows pointing to your goal instead of one big one.

Or try giving yourself an explicit reward for making small milestones, something proportionate to the magnitude of the step. Eat at a favorite burger joint, or hike a favorite trail, or watch a movie you really want. Whatever floats your boat.

You might even try a program of personal denial, don't allow youself to have certain pleasurable things _unless_ you make a milestone. Pull at both ends, the "work hard play hard" system.

In other words, make the effort/reward loop as small as possible to help keep you motivated. This is especially important during tedious/grinding parts of your work that are often mistaken as burnout when in fact they're just boring and you're really desiring a reward at the end of it.

</comment><comment><USER48> Laziness is a virtue

<comment><USER49> That might be true in some specific contexts, but I'm sure this topic doesn't regard any of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> FOr me, if I am burnt out I just take a nap or go for a walk. If I am lazy, I keep browsing my fav. websites(HN, reddit) again n again..F5 comes handy here :)

<comment><USER51> I feel like being burnt out is more endemic than just being a bit tired (and thus a nap fixes it). It permeates everything to do with your job. All tasks even when interesting feel like a burden very quickly. There is a sense of being intellectually tired. A loss of confidence leading to self doubt and thus begins the downward spiral in productivity.</comment></comment>


Hubble Shot Captures the Biggest "Star Nursery" - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5427429/unbelievable-hubble-shot-captures-the-biggest-star-nursery-nearby <comment><USER2> I don't like that they're calling it a "shot". It is a picture, but it's no photograph. All those "gorgeous" colors and structures are added by computers shifting frequencies we can't see into visible range colors.</comment>


Show HN: Coinplay.io–buy Indie PC Games with BTC, LTC, XDG and CC - <AUTHOR> https://coinplay.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Built this to replace a Shopify store over the last few months. Moving toward selling bundles in future builds.

We're a small team of three working to find indie game devs and publishers to partner with us. We're active on social media. And our current site is the foundation and first iteration of our sales platform.

Would love some feedback.</comment>


Two hackers kicked out of Hack the North for making jokes on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://news.mlh.io/when-jokes-go-too-far-09-19-2015 <comment><USER2> Knee-jerk reactions and zero-tolerance policies and no-fun-zones really are truly in the finest tradition of the hacker spirit!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is ridiculous

<comment><USER4> if you make other people unconfortable, you will be kicked out of any place you go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10249887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10249887)</comment>


Ask HN: Which bank is good with Stripe Atlas? - <AUTHOR> Have heard much bad news about Silicon valley bank in HN. Hence the question. <comment><USER2> I recommend Capital One Spark Business, technically you can also use a 360 account (for personal use). However, for businesses use a business bank account (aka spark). They weren't accepting new accounts at one point, but I believe they are now (not 100% sure)

Great customer service, easy to manage, nice web interface, no fees.</comment>


Vancouver, the New Tech Hub - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-22/vancouver-welcomes-tech-companies-hampered-by-u-dot-s-dot-work-visa-caps

<comment><USER2> Any Vancouverites/Van islanders sound off here. I was in Gastown in 2003 trying to start a company, it was still rundown. It is one of the nicest large cities to live in.

Vancouver has always had a decent games industry and has earn its reputation there.

As for the article, it seems to gloss over that a lot of these offices are waiting rooms while visa's come in.</comment>


Beloved Freddie Frinton skit to air on UK TV for first time - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/dec/15/beloved-freddie-frinton-skit-dinner-for-one-to-air-on-uk-tv-for-first-time <comment><USER2> Swedes are shocked when I tell them that their beloved piece of British culture is next to completely unknown in its native land.

</comment><comment> em-bee i just watched this as per tradition, and wondered if if someone ever thought to post the video on hackernews only to find this article.

i knew this was a german production, but i had no idea that it it actually originated in the UK and yet was never played on UK TV before.

</comment><comment> em-bee other articles:

[https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/dinner-for-one- music-...](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/dinner-for-one-music-hall- sketch-beloved-by-millions-of-germans-finally-gets-uk-premiere/)

this one has more background details:

[https://www.dw.com/en/dinner-for-one-germanys-cult- british-c...](https://www.dw.com/en/dinner-for-one-germanys-cult-british- classic-to-air-on-uk-tv-for-first-time/a-46421606)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I count only thirteen broadcasts in German TV this year! Surely I'm mistaken?

</comment><comment> em-bee it is worth noting that there actually exist multiple versions of it, as it apparently has been played and recorded multiple times</comment>


What does Amazon hope to gain from Twitch? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28931840

<comment><USER2> a foothold against facebook who got oculus?</comment>


Ten Ideas to Save Newspapers - <AUTHOR> http://www.pheedo.info/archives/2009/01/top_10_ideas_to.html <comment><USER2> I don't know of any newspapers that aren't already doing most or even all of these things. These tips aren't really all that helpful. They're obvious.</comment>


Exclusive Interview with the Amazon Founder on What He Plans to Conquer Next - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2018/08/30/bezos-unbound-exclusive-interview-with-the-amazon-founder-on-what-he-plans-to-conquer-next/ <comment><USER2> Before they conquer anything next, I would ask that Amazon reflect internally on improving seller fraud detection. Some devious sellers are quite tricky.

Most recently I was defrauded twice by the same seller that swapped out a video card with a slower one. Most people would not even notice unless they looked at the video control panel and system settings for the clock speed. Rather than playing the return and refund game, I would rather Amazon utilize their government relationships and track down the dodgy sellers.

If you try to provide feedback, it will be censored or blocked. Reaching their customer support is nearly impossible. Jeff, please conquer that problem first.

Queue the PR team! :-)</comment>


Show HN: Opensource Chrome Extension With AngularJS + UnderscoreJS - <AUTHOR> http://ramigbtech.tumblr.com/post/94482860612/opensource-chrome-extension-with-angularjs-underscore

<comment><USER2> You should say what your extension does in the title.</comment>


LÖVE 0.10 released with iOS and Android support - <AUTHOR> https://love2d.org/wiki/0.10.0 <comment><USER2> Lack of native mobile support was one of the reasons I dropped LOVE for other frameworks.

This is fantastic, and LOVE/Lua is really fun to work with, I highly recommend this framework.

<comment><USER3> Does love work well with moonscript?

<comment><USER4> While we're at it: everyone, check out MoonScript [1]. It's a great, succinct and featureful compile-to-Lua language, although sadly not very widespread at the moment. It features significant whitespace, syntactic sugar to reduce keyword noise in programs, table and list comprehensions, line (statement) decorators, classes, _export_ and _import_ for working with modules, implicit return, JSON-like table literals and much, much more. I, for one, absolutely love working with it.

[1]: [http://moonscript.org](http://moonscript.org)

<comment><USER5> I tried but the \ syntax for calling an instance method on an object is asinine and I hate it.

<comment><USER3> Heh yes, a very common complaint. I don't like it either, but the trade off still seems worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Site is hugged to death. Google cache/mirror: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://love2d.org/wiki/0.10.0)

<comment><USER7> You mean Loved to death? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is wonderful. I'm quite fond of Lua and while I've tinkered with LÖVE here and there, the lack of mobile support turned me off from using it for serious projects. I'll be giving it another look soon.

As an aside, I'd like to plug a Lua library I have nothing to do with called middleclass [1]. I've used it with LÖVE and it's handy for game dev!

[1] [https://github.com/kikito/middleclass](https://github.com/kikito/middleclass)

<comment><USER9> Middle-class is awesome, thanks for sharing that .. I'll put it on my lab bench for hacking over the next few days.

Continuing the list of 'handy little Lua libraries that others in this thread might be interested in', I'll add that I think that a lot of newcomers to Lua from languages like Ruby and Python might enjoy having lua-enumerable around as well, which provides a set of enumerable ops that fit in quite well with Lua's tables .. check it out:

[https://github.com/mikelovesrobots/lua- enumerable](https://github.com/mikelovesrobots/lua-enumerable)

Hanappes' got a few nice Lua classes in its lang folder too:

[https://github.com/makotok/Hanappe/tree/master/projects/hana...](https://github.com/makotok/Hanappe/tree/master/projects/hanappe- framework/src/hp/lang)

Useful for newcomers to Lua and pro's alike, imho ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> LOVE uses LuaJit, right? How does that work with mobile where you may be denied execute access to the data segment?

<comment><USER10> To answer my own question, here's a quote from the LuaJIT website:

> Note: the JIT compiler is disabled for iOS, because regular iOS Apps are not > allowed to generate code at runtime. You'll only get the performance of the > LuaJIT interpreter on iOS. This is still faster than plain Lua, but much > slower than the JIT compiler. Please complain to Apple, not me. Or use > Android. :-p

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone got any games written using LÖVE to show HN?

<comment><USER12> I made oh my giraffe [1] in LÖVE and released it for iOS and Android using these ports.

[1] [http://www.ohmygiraffe.com](http://www.ohmygiraffe.com)

<comment><USER13> Very simple but beautiful! The LÖVE wiki on the Android port has an example of running from adb, but how did you create and apk for your Android port?

<comment><USER12> Thank you! This page has documentation for packaging an apk: [https://bitbucket.org/MartinFelis/love-android- sdl2/wiki/Gam...](https://bitbucket.org/MartinFelis/love-android- sdl2/wiki/Game_Packaging)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would love to tinker with LÖVE, but I don't know the first thing about Lua. Anyone have pointers to good introductory resources they can share?

<comment><USER15> "Programming in Lua" is Lua's K&R. It is a very well written technical book.

The Lua reference manual is also very approachable.

[http://www.lua.org/pil/](http://www.lua.org/pil/)

[http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/](http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/)

<comment><USER16> Löve uses luajit by default, which is Lua 5.1 with some 5.2 sprinkled on top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I encountered LÖVE when I was searching for simple graphics engine that can do 60fps consistently without frame skipping. It worked very well.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does LÖVE compare with Corona SDK, a commercial Lua-based mobile framework?

<comment><AUTHOR> LÖVE is free, open source, runs on desktop and mobile, local builds and so on. Also, it is based on SDL2 so, if you know C, you can modify the code.

That being said, Corona SDK is probably more mature for mobile. Personally I prefer LÖVE because of the fast iteration cycle do to local builds (Corona SDK builds the game on their servers).

<comment><USER19> Only if you want to deploy it to a device. Otherwise you can reload instantly when developing on PC/Mac

<comment><AUTHOR> I know you can use the simulator to test, but I prefer to test directly on the device and when you need to wait ~1 minute per build it is a bit annoying. I used Corona SDK for a small 2D game two years ago, maybe now the build times is better ...

<comment><USER20> Reposting what seany wrote 4 hours ago [dead]:

You can also use the "viewer" tool to sync your project with a application shell on the device via dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you make networked multi player games in love that work on mobile?

<comment><USER12> Yes, LÖVE includes ENet and LuaSocket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A bit OOT, LibGDX is another game engine, but for the JVM (can use Java, Scala, Clojure, Kotlin, etc), that runs natively on desktop, Android, Web (transpiled to JS), iOS (using RoboVM). It has Lua support as well through 3rd party.

Udacity has Nanodegree using it: [https://www.udacity.com/course/mobile-2d-game-developer- nano...](https://www.udacity.com/course/mobile-2d-game-developer-nanodegree-- nd011)

Disclaimer: I'm writing a game using LibGDX.

<comment><USER22> I tried LibGDX but the thing that troubled me was that while other engines had a relatively straightforward approach to cross platform builds (click a button or build a particular target), LibGDX required you to write a bunch of boilerplate for each platform.

Is that still around?

<comment><USER23> The boiler plate is 10-20 lines per platform, which is auto-generated for you and let's you do platform specific things easily. Any production game needs this capability to include things like ads, notifications etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I tried Löve a few times as well as many others while searching for an engine to make simple graphical/physical simulations using a dynamic scripting language in for work (using other libraries). It was okay but my favorite was Gosu (ruby/C++), I wish it saw more love.

</comment><comment><USER25> Perfect timing to make a game over the christmas break :)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is pretty grand news, and I never used Lua for game development. Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER27> One of the most consistent frameworks in LÖVE I know is [https://github.com/necrophcodr/fuccboiGDX/](https://github.com/necrophcodr/fuccboiGDX/)

</comment><comment><USER28> How does LÖVE users handle source being open when distributing games?

I would guess not everyone will be okay with their artwork, sound files and other resources being available so easily.

<comment> james-skemp HTML5 game development is much the same. Even with compiled applications someone can get your code and resources if they want them, so ...

I think if developers aren't okay with their resources being that available, they probably don't look at using frameworks like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> as a non game developer, LÖVE was the only framework using which I was actually able to create a small game . So simple it hurts.

</comment><comment><USER30> What is really staggeringly missing is a web port!

It should be a click-away to run a LÖVE game in your browser. Its not. A few good prototypes have been made, but they are all abandoned? :(

<comment><USER9> We have this in MOAI (a competing framework) already, by way of the emscripten tool .. which is awesome .. so it means that with MOAI you can write apps that run on iOS/OSX/Windows/Linux/Android .. and HTML5 hosts. Pretty amazing times ..

(And we're about to do a new release of MOAI soon too..)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Site's loading too slowly for me to get to the main page, so at the risk of starting a Haddaway thread…

What is LÖVE?

<comment><USER32> It is a 2D game development framework for the Lua language.

<comment><USER33> he meant, baby don't hurt me.</comment></comment></comment>


Multithreaded Javascript on its way: Web Workers - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/web-tech/2008/12/04/web-workers-part-2/

<comment><USER2> i wonder how locking and synchronization would work then. will there be any keywords for allowign this. my (loose) understanding was that with the old (current rather) js there is a single thread that does everything so locking is not required.

the spec does say message-passing is the coordination mechanism, but that does not automatically imply mutexes and conditional waits...</comment>


In a court hearing, oil companies publicly backed the science of climate change - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/22/17151532/climate-tutorial-san-francisco-oakland-lawsuits-judge-alsup-chevron-exxon <comment><USER2> The science has been settled since the 1970's. Since then it has been a political issue and football that has been kicked around and ignored for a long time. The collapse of Kyoto in the 1990's was probably the moment when I knew humanity wouldn't choose to save its habitat and certainly wasn't interested in doing it in the least expensive way, which is what the 2C warming "goal" is about, it is the cheapest route.

Alas the USA collapsed the deal then and it is on its way to trying to collapse the Paris agreement now. The oil companies are fully aware of this and have been as long as we the people have been since the science was settle 5 decades ago. They can't be sued for our collective choice to not do anything, that isn't fair.

<comment><USER3> Suing the oil companies is not going to make a difference, anyway. What matters is the broad public opinion, and the good news is that we seem to have passed one tipping point, in that the consensus now is that climate change is both real and problematical, and deniers are increasingly being seen as cranks.

<comment><USER4> It will take money from people who continue to fund denial and political diversions.

It will increase the potential costs they consider the next time a major industry has to choose between ending human civilization and their quarterly profits.

It will punish shareholders who supported this behaviour.

It's not the only answer but I don't see any way that it hurts.

<comment><USER3> Agreed; I am not particularly upset that it is happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Alsup is a badass - be it patent law, or DACA, etc- he takes a balanced view, and "does his homework"(which might be problematic from a legal POV). I would like it if more judges were like him.

<comment><USER6> For those unaware, Alsup is the judge who won plenty of respect when he rightly called out Oracle for trying to inflate the importance of some lines of Java:

[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20121127123047...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20121127123047829)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't that imply that Chevron has never produced an ad for the product? But I've seen there ads hundreds of times!

So the lawyer is saying that if a company spends tens of millions on advertising, that it has no effect on the economy that he is arguing is causing global warming?

<comment><USER8> Only if you think the customers wouldn't otherwise have bought any oil, which I think is unlikely. Nobody buys oil for fun.

The only purpose of the advert is to make people buy from Chevron instead of their competitors, but the same amount of oil is getting sold either way.</comment></comment>


Inside Google's European HQ - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7290322.stm <comment><USER2> It's a pretty cool buiding to be at.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Alt coins worth buying? - <AUTHOR> Most coins seem to not be keeping up with bitcoin. Any that might break out soon? <comment><USER2> [http://coinmarketcap.com](http://coinmarketcap.com)

Click a coin and it has all the info you need. Website, social, etc. Do some googling with the top 10-20 market cap coins to start and find some with ideas you like. Just stay away from Bitconnect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Digital Monetary Trust

oops... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Monetary_Trust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Monetary_Trust)

</comment><comment><USER4> SALT is one of the few projects about to launch an actual service. Now trading on exchanges under $8. The token will cost $25 on the website when saltlending.com launches. My target is $15 within 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. They're all pump and dump and don't have the network/social edge.

<comment><USER6> lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://email@example.com/stop-buying-bitcoin- seriousl...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/stop-buying-bitcoin- seriously-9f4cd66443e5) \- I advise Ripple in here.

<comment><USER8> [http://hivergent.com/you-shouldnt-invest-in-ripple-and- not-b...](http://hivergent.com/you-shouldnt-invest-in-ripple-and-not-because- its-a-scam/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ripple. If you're going to invest in Ripple, don't bother if you're looking for a short-term gain. It's a long-term project.

<comment><USER9> Ripple is not for trading in this way, even it's creators said as much.

[http://hivergent.com/you-shouldnt-invest-in-ripple-and- not-b...](http://hivergent.com/you-shouldnt-invest-in-ripple-and-not-because- its-a-scam/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've put my eggs in Ark's basket.

[https://ark.io](https://ark.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the progress bars for the various projects

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any thoughts on these(they show up alot on whattomine.com):

Monacoin(MONA)

Vertcoin(VTC)

Zcash(ZEC)

LBRY(LBC)

Monero(XMR)

</comment><comment><USER11> I would suggest Ripple after watching all the market share and availability.

</comment><comment><USER12> You're on HN and don't know about REQ?

</comment><comment><USER13> Golem (GNT)

</comment><comment><USER14> Monero (XMR)

<comment><USER15> I've only just started reading a bit more about Monero after having watched Bitcoin from a far distance and Monero feels like it could actually become a useful currency. I have no trouble imagining myself paying and getting paid in Monero, something that I could never see happening with Bitcoin considering transaction time and cost.

Monero is fungible, meaning that it is anonymous compared to Bitcoin that has a public ledger.

Transaction fees are manageable, about $3 I think. Monero's block size adjusts dynamically to the amount of transactions. Work is in progress that will lower transaction fees even more.

The community seems friendly and helpful, if judged by "internet standards".

Will it increase in value? Who knows? But it feels like Monero could be actually useful someday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Monero.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1: Ripple 2: Stellar 3: NEM 4: IOTA

</comment><comment><USER18> Ethereum of course</comment>


Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google-got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace/?postshare=1051429409402997 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion, 4 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this has been a discussion going on for a long time now. What I believe to be true is it really depends on the person. If you're someone who is self-conscious then yes you'll feel like everyone is judging you all the time. If you have the ability to stay focused on your work without being around colleagues then you should be allowed to work from home.

I've worked in open offices, offices with high partitions and from home. When I work from home what's stopping me from opening up news or playing video games? When I work in a partition and I need to talk to another engineer face- to-face I can't just glance over to see if they are available. Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. I don't give a damn if they see me in a snuggie or sleeping under my desk.

I believe the real problem is the lack of choices. You should be able to choose the kind of environment you want to work in and not feel like you're forced in a situation you don't like. I think it's wrong to say "open offices are destroying the workplace".

<comment><USER4> > When I work from home what's stopping me from opening up news or playing > video games?

Being an adult. Really, do you require a baby sitter to keep you busy?

<comment><USER5> Given the popularity of site-blocking apps like SelfControl, Freedom etc, yes, many people do need help with this. I don't use them, but I go through quite wide swings between ignoring many distractions to get work done to having trouble getting work done because of all the distractions (just plotting my HN comments alone would probably yield a nice sinusoidal wave).

And I absolutely use a choice of work space to help mediate this. When I used to freelance I had to get out of my apartment and work at a coffee shop to really start my day. Now I often have days where it's fine to work from home, but when I find myself completely distracted from work while at home I go into the office because it's just slightly less acceptable to be goofing off all the time there, and that's just the nudge I need to get into my work for the day.

<comment><USER4> If the work can't keep your attention, perhaps you should find better work.

<comment><USER6> This is an age-old problem.

* In a survey of more than 3,200 people conducted by Salary.com, 64% say they visit websites unrelated to work daily.

Source: [http://business.time.com/2012/03/13/youre-wasting-time-at- wo...](http://business.time.com/2012/03/13/youre-wasting-time-at-work-right- now-arent-you/)

<comment><USER7> And the other 36% are liars?

<comment><USER8> Or they don't use computers at work - they just waste time in other ways :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The ultimate irony of open plan offices is that if you are considerate of your neighbors, you can't actually collaborate in the open part of the office. Every single time I want to talk to someone for an in depth period of time, we almost immediately move to a conference room so we don't disturb the people around us.

If everyone had offices, I would walk into their office and we would not need to move after starting our discussion because we wouldn't be bothering anyone.

I don't see any advantages to an open plan office with more than 1 team in it (i.e. max 10 people) other than cost and startup-chic aesthetics.

<comment><USER10> People characterize DRM as something that doesn't deter criminals but punishes honest consumers. I've often thought of open office plans in the same way. Unless someone's a jerk, they're not going to want to talk to anyone about anything in the actual open office area, which is the whole point of "increasing collaboration". They're going to whisper (which impedes communication) or grab whoever they want to talk to and go someplace where they're not disturbing other people.

On the other hand, the jerks are not going to think twice about it, and they'll just walk over to someone's desk and start talking at them, and not always with an indoor voice, much less actually trying to keep it down. Jerks 1, non-jerks 0.

Another very, very, VERY common thing I see on places like HN is people talking about how much they love being able to walk over and ask their coworkers questions all the time with open offices. Meaningfully, I don't see them complaining about other people asking them questions all the time due their increased visibility. This always makes it sounds like it just enables people who always ask someone else before trying to figure things out on their own. Jerks 2, non-jerks 0.

On the other hand, open offices are really good at making engineers deeply unhappy and unproductive, while allowing some director or VP to look like a hero for saving a bunch of money while "increasing collaboration". Jerks 3, non-jerks 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Open offices are an immense waste. Guess much work I get done when the five people near me have visitors resulting in three separate concurrent discussions? I already have Bose noise cancelling headphones. They are amazing, but cannot be expected to stop that level of interruption.

I have a strong work ethic. The productivity loss actually makes me sad. It's a waste of my employer's money, the customer's money, and everyone's time. Just let me be productive. Please.

</comment><comment><USER12> Absolutely agree, especially for think-intensive things like software development where "flow" is so important. Closed offices are marginally more expensive but the productivity improvements massively outweigh the investment.

The lack of privacy is just uncomfortable. It always feels like you're being watched, even if you're not.

<comment><USER13> If the purpose of open-plan offices is to intimidate people into working, they backfire. I fuck around way more in an open-plan office than when I have privacy.

There are many reasons for it. The first is that I have a fixed amount of "goofing off" (which is just giving my mind some rest) that I'll do per day. In a private office, it might take 20 minutes and I'm done and back to work. In an open-plan office where I have to intersperse it with the appearance of working and it takes longer (and the goofing off is less mentally restful, so I do more). The second is that, contrary to what a lot of people say, I find that 15- to 30-minute slivers of time (between other engagements) can be very productive, but _not_ in an open-plan office. So the meeting multiplier is more severe. If lunch is 12:00 then a meeting from 10 to 11 kills the rest of the morning, whereas with private offices you'd still have 45-55 minutes of useful time. The third is that I've always felt like if getting work done efficiently were important, I'd have a legitimate working environment to get it done in. Being visible from behind suggests low status, which suggests that the work isn't that important. So if I'm intellectually engaged or the work is helping my career, I'll do it very well... but if neither is true, the surrounding physical environment supports me in not caring. Fourth, of course, is the anxiety caused by the aggravating and unreliable work environment. It would be bad to deal with a constantly noisy environment, but that would at least be predictable. Open-offices add to the evil by failing you at unpredictable times. Someone might tap you on the shoulder. Broken. Someone might pair with the person sitting next to you. Broken. The person behind you might get a phone call. Broken.

<comment><USER14> Is the purpose of open-plan offices ever to intimidate people into working? If so, I'd love to read a case study on it.

From everything I've read they are mostly built because of the lower costs, better flexibility, and associated collaboration benefits.

<comment><USER13> So, part of it is certainly that they're the cheap 'n' shitty option. However, when you weigh the money saved against the loss of productivity, they're not worth it.

Open-plan offices aren't collaborative. Open-Plan Syndrome actually makes people more selfish and misanthropic. When people don't feel in control of their space (and what makes open-plan so bad isn't just the awfulness of the environment, but how fucking unreliable it is) they tend to be more jealous and territorial, not less.

They also aren't egalitarian. Let's say that you're two seats away from the CEO, and between you and him is a junior who needs to pair a lot. Whose space is going to be invaded when that happens? Not the CEO's. That's just human nature. It's not even conscious, most of the time. Open-plan offices actually reinforce status differences.

The main reason for the open-plan trend is that these offices photograph well. The act of getting work done is abstract and hard to prove for the camera. Open-plan offices look busy and energetic and (gahh) youthful. Unfortunately, they're also awful places to work for 8-10 straight hours, in the same way as one would not want to live in Times Square (as opposed to the Upper West Side or Brooklyn Heights) even though it is visually impressive.

<comment><USER15> There are different kinds of collaboration and you're taking a very narrow view of it. Open offices might suck for explicit collaboration, like pairing, but for the type of collaboration that happens somewhat randomly, they're basically the only option. What I'm talking about mostly manifests itself in overheard conversations where someone who wasn't initially part of the conversation realizes they can add valuable context and joins in. It's really hard to quantify the benefits of something like this but, especially in software development, it can be very useful in leveraging past experiences of the entire team to avoid going down too many wrong paths. It also means that you don't have to put nearly as much effort into communicating context around your organization because employees pick it up naturally from conversations around them.

I'm generally in favor of a somewhat hybrid approach, where small teams have their own cubicle or office and everything is open inside because I've seen what happens when that sort of organic communication doesn't happen either because people work in individual offices or because too many people work remotely.

<comment><USER16> "What I'm talking about mostly manifests itself in overheard conversations where someone who wasn't initially part of the conversation realizes they can add valuable context and joins in."

Which only works when staff are half listening to most conversations. Which means they are distracted for pretty much the entire day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I started my career working at a team room, which was exclusive for the technical people and had no more than 7 people at its peak. Then progressively went from open-office to open-office.

And man, how I hate those. I can't get focus, which forces me to bring the deep-thinking work home, proceeding on a two-shift day, similar to what Paul Graham describes on the "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" essay ([http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)). Even simple things like sending a page-length email took more time than needed, and were high frustrating.

Yet, recently I've been working on a company which only have team rooms. I'm on a 3 persons' room, but the rooms vary from 1 to 6 persons. Furthermore they have lots of perforated plates on ceilings and rooms are (mostly) sound isolated from adjacent ones by a foam-like thing they stuff between the division separations.

When I started here I just had that -wow- moment. I couldn't believe I was actually doing software design, reading documentation and others immerse thinking tasks during normal work time. No need to carry stuff home no more.

Did I mentioned already how I hate open-offices? :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Open floorplans are worse than cubicles. Not worse than four people crammed into a sweaty two-person cubicle, but worse than 1-2 people in a cubicle. Significantly, obviously worse.

We've gone from half-walls to no walls.

<comment><USER19> Personally, I find cubicles to be the worst of both worlds: too spread out for much collaboration with neighbors, but open enough go have nearly all the noise and distraction of an open office.

<comment><USER20> I find working from home to be the best out of all three choices. I'd never go back to working in an office, cubicles, open office space, whatever.

If your business structure is so terrible that you can't manage a remote team, you're probably not that great at managing folks onsite either.

<comment><USER21> I've learned that for the kind of stuff I do face to face communication next to a whiteboard is the best place to discuss complex technical topics.

Also, co-location _does_ create serendipitous instances of sharing information.

It's not a matter of management. It's about does the organization need the maximum communication bandwidth between individuals possibly from separate teams or not.

If we take for granted that silos are bad, then that leads to the notion that cross-segment communications are good, and the easiest way to have those is co-locate everyone.

There is something lost in organizational potential by not co-locating if the culture is open and encourages individual initiative.

Working remote does have it's values as well, I grant that. I feel I'm much able better to concentrate at home. But I recognize the value face to face communication has as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Things are getting so insane that even some top universities have open-plan offices. Am I supposed to prove theorems or to write Lisp in such an environment? Seriously?

<comment><USER8> Is that a new development? I thought open-plan study halls were common in universities and libraries.

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/5914733818/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/5914733818/)

<comment><USER23> But in a library silence is expected; not conference calls, chat and collaboration.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. A library doesn't count as open plan. Silence policies are very strict. Open plan offices on the other hand...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> j-c-m Open offices are primarily designed to save money, and they save a ton of money when compared with private offices combined with collaborative working spaces (fancy word for conference rooms/areas). It is very easy to quantify this cost difference, and this cost savings is immediate. It is much more difficult to quantify productivity impact vs costs, and this would not be realized clearly and immediately.

So 10/10 times now companies pick the option that costs 2x-3x less, be dammed with trying to figure out its impact on productivity.

<comment><USER24> Bingo. This is what these discussions so often miss: open office floorpans translate to immediate savings on the company's balance sheets. They permit companies to stuff more workers into fewer square feet, and those square feet are how commercial real estate is priced. All of the stated benefits of open office floor plans (culture, collaboration, communication, etc) are subordinate to, or justification for, those savings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've never worked in anything other than open plan offices. Some are definitely better than others. The worst are offices without breakaway spaces, which cause impromptu meetings to happen at desks, which can be immensely distracting.

On the other hand, I have found that open plan offices can be a boon when working in small teams. One arrangement I remember quite fondly had groups of 4 desks in an X configuration with L shaped desks. We were working 4 to a team and it was a friendly and cooperative environment. The L shaped desks were also significantly roomier than I've encountered elsewhere.

I should note that my experience is in London, where I suspect there's a greater premium on floorspace than in many other places.

</comment><comment><USER17> Another give-away against open-offices is that people who decides them usually reserve a single office for thy selves.

A real story: a given company moved to new, but existing, installations. The original facilities were organized in small rooms. The boss ordered a full redesign of the interior into a single large open space, with one exception: a closed office for himself.

This ancient philosophy of "what's good for others doesn't suit me" never convinced me. :)

</comment><comment><USER26> counterpoint: [https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great- te...](https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams)

edit: In summary, the more pairwise interactions between people your team has, the more likely they are to be a productive, successful team. Open office plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people.

My 2c, is that open office vs closed office is simply a matter of tradeoffs. It seems easier to 'opt-out' of distractions (by putting on headphones) than 'opt-in' to interaction (by say wandering the halls talking to random people in their cubes.) People who complain about open offices probably are complaining about a culture where an open office results in distraction, not the office itself. If you have a culture where people can be sitting next to you but can signal they shouldn't be interrupted, or there is ample quiet space for private work to be done, you can have the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER27> I'm a big proponent of ~3 people offices as opposed to an open floor plan. There are many ways to "opt-in" to interactions:

\- lunch/dinner is done in a dining area

\- I invite people out for a coffee break

\- I can go hangout in a common area

\- I can just walk in to someone's office just like I would walk to someone's desk in an open floor plan

\- I bump into people while walking down the hall, grabbing a snack from the kitchen, etc.

There's just so many ways I interact with people at the office, that making sure I'm surrounded by people I can't look away from or mute all the time is completely unnecessary.

And I don't want to have to blast music into my ears all day and wear horse blinkers just to get some continuous hours of distraction-free creative thinking done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm in my 40's and I thought going from cubes to open office was going to be hard. I couldn't have been more wrong: I love it. I guess I don't need headphones to be productive, and I don't care if someone sees what I'm doing on my screen, because I'm already at the office > 10 hrs a day, plus at home, so they can judge all they want if I have Facebook up in one window.

I do understand that some people need solitude to do there work, which means that if a company goes open-office, they need to also have some spaces allocated for private rooms.

My wife is in finance, and I stopped by her work place the other day, and you could hear a pin drop. It was like a library filled with people, I couldn't believe I used to work in an environment like this.

The only drawback that I agree with the author is the vulnerability to disease. We have suffered throught his as well, and I'm not sure what to do about it besides wearing masks all the time. If a more dangerous disease did flare up in our area, I would probably work from home, and I think the employer should offer this as an alternative, especially if there is something particularly dangerous going around.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seriously depends on the person. I personally hate having to commute to an office and would much prefer to work remotely from home, but I know plenty of folks who enjoy the social interaction at an open (or closed) work space. Besides, open, close, or remote work place is much more of a personal preference (like preference for different IDEs) than some inherently right or wrong decision a company can make (like decreeing no employee is allowed to become pregnant). So the smart company should leave the choice of whether to work at the open office, in a closed cubicle, or remotely at home up to the employee so that the details of how an employee maximizes his productivity is left to him, instead of handed down from up-top based upon statistical studies. After all, if you as an employer is going to trust your employees to be able to properly optimize your dataflows, innovate new databases techniques, not "drop table users", etc., why not also trust your employees to know what work environment works best for him?

</comment><comment><USER14> The pendulum seems to swing on this issue every 20-25 years on this issue so it makes a lot of sense we are seeing so many articles about how the open plan is terrible now.

Wait 20 years and there will have been a big transformation in the workplace with more people working privately - likely with the addition of more work- from-home/remote arrangements. But there will be a push again at that point with new articles written about how people are typing away without any personal contact and how 'insert early adopter' is the devil and how they are crushing the souls of their workers.

Smart workplace design appropriately accommodates the needs of workers for the types of work they do as well as the needs of the worker as a human.

Total cop-out answer, but it really comes down to balance between communication and privacy.

I think workplace design needs to keep in mind a variety of factors, and they cannot always be optimized totally for the company itself or totally for the individual employees... which would be an impossible notion anyway.

We rave about how fast companies can scale up from small startups to have hundreds or thousands of employees, but I'd love to see that work in the Bay Area with all staff getting private offices. Quickly build more highrises? Not likely.

Not all employees want - or need - private offices in the first place. And even if there would be a benefit to providing them, maybe the company doesn't feel like optimizing individual productivity is the most important thing in the business.

All that said, there is likely a decent overlap in the Hacker News Venn Diagram of people who loathe open plans and people who start companies. I've wondered why we don't hear about more new companies who have adopted a privacy-first office strategy. Surely it would give them an edge in hiring those staff who desire such workplaces.

<comment><USER30> Office space in the Bay Area is expensive, so is construction (even indoors). When you can put employees into 6x6 plots in an open space, everything else looks egregiously expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> When I worked at an office with cubicles, it wasn't any less noisy than the open office I work in. You could hear everyone talking and it was impossible to tell who was in the office and who wasn't.

It seems to me that a better compromise would be to have small private rooms in addition to open collaborative spaces. Cubicles are the worst of both.

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't help thinking this whole trend started with the industry which epitomises the values that our working society holds, that is finance, and the trading floor. I worked on one of these for 15 years - it was fantastic for getting deals done and increasing teamwork when sales, trading, and research all need to work together. Indeed it was when research was moved _off_ the trading floor in around 2005 that I decided to leave, because in that industry, not being "in the thick of it" a huge disadvantage. I think a lot of the open plan idea comes from a misguided view that if trading floors can make so many millions, then they must be extended everywhere.

Now that I have gone back to my coding roots, but still work on a "trading floor" (open plan tech office), I have found myself having to enforce my will to my partners to _inform_ them that I will be working only half day in the office, because my productivity skyrockets as soon as I get home in front of my computer, with nothing to distract me. Luckily, I have the luxury of being able to do this. I believe my productivity in the open plan office is easily less than 50% of what it is at home.

I do not believe that coding is a collaborative activity beyond periodic (twice a week max?) discussions to ensure teamwork. It's an intensely private activity, as is all work which demands high concentration, including writing.

</comment><comment><USER2> I currently work in an office made of small-ish rooms, each with 5 to 10 persons in an open floor plan. The people sharing a room are in the same team. I don't think I could go from this to having a private office, the cold and quiet loneliness would be depressing. I love the banter that comes up while waiting for a test suite to complete, and the ability to quickly do some pair programming or have an impromptu team meeting. At any time, we can simply turn around to face each other instead of the desk.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have said it before here, but the best office layout I saw was at Autodesk HQ in mid 1990's.

EVERY single engineer (or was it every employee) got an enclosed small office. One office per employee. Full height glass wall between the hallway and the office. Big enough for a desk, chair, 2 chairs for visitors.

Oh and one more thing. Maybe because I work in IT but what is it with installing AC related machinery ABOVE/NEAR the server room (like ceiling)? The machinery makes SO much noise in the office.

<comment><USER34> That was bog standard at the Microsoft campus in Redmond as of when I left in 2006.

Microsoft is/was well-known for giving employees their own office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It all depends on the culture and dynamics of the workplace I think. If everyone keeps their voices low (I don't mean whispering, just not booming), and are concious that when people have their headphones and have a look of deep concentration they shouldn't be disturbed, then it really is not that bad. Then again, I'm the sort of person that prefers to work with a bit of background noise rather than in deathly silence where each tiny sounds causes me to jump.

It also sounds like the writer works in a place that doesn't really need much inter-person communication on an hour by hour basis. As a software develop I find being able to quickly ask those 5 second questions invaluable, questions I wouldn't necessarily have bothered to ask if I had get up or send an email.

> Each day, my associates and I are seated at a table staring at each other, > having an ongoing 12-person conversation from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

It takes a certain amount of self control to avoid this; just as it takes self control not to spend your entire day browsing HN...

</comment><comment><USER36> I've worked in closed-off private offices, and I'm working in an open office right, and there are definitely plusses and minuses to both, IMO. Especially if you're all working on the same product, there is something really nice feeling about being physically around everybody; it creates a sense togetherness.

The noise sucks though, especially for tasks that require full concentration. Headphones and/or earplugs can help a bit, but it's no substitute for a truly tranquil environment. Working from home can help there, but then that's the other extreme of connectedness.

I've pondered a bit if you could have a "no loud conversations" policy (think: like a library), with a bunch of rooms off to the side that could be used for conversations.

Seems like it might give a bit of best of both worlds.

Edit: Also, the open office is made worse by the current stylistic trend of no carpet and shiny hard surfaces everywhere. It looks cool, but it amplifies noise like crazy.

</comment><comment><USER37> I imagine when google interviews candidates they don't do it in the open office, they probably go into a (quiet) conference room.

That's at least a little telling, isn't it?

Suggestion: Request to be interviewed in the actual seat/location that you're going to be working in and see what they say.

<comment><USER38> They'll probably tell you there are security considerations against that. The next time you interview with Google, if you get a building tour, pay attention to the "no photography past these point" and similar notices...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I got a lot more done than I expected when I worked in an open office. Not as much as I would have liked, but it wasn't a complete wash.

That said, for productivity, nothing beats being able to close my door _and_ put on headphones in my current office.

</comment><comment><USER40> Give me a dark cave where I can munch my thoughts in private without seeing or listening to anybody else unless I choose to do so, and you've got yourself a winner employee here.

Office layout is certainly an area where one size does _not fit_ all.

</comment><comment><USER41> I totally agree with this piece. Some may prefer an open office space, and that's fine for them - but they can probably still work well in a private office. For those who are noise-sensitive, though, it can be a huge distraction. I've started working from home a lot more just because of how loud it is in the office. A lot of our developers and admins have voices that ... carry, to say the least.

It's lucky that I can work from home and not be too distracted, but for some people with kids/stay-at-home partner, it may be difficult. It would be great if employers at least gave people the option to have an office.

</comment><comment><USER42> The biggest bias in the discussion that occurs on HN, is that most people commenting are engineers. Programming is inherently heads down, whereas a large number of professional jobs are not.

If you want to run a sales team, open office is almost mandatory. The energy you hear from others closing deals causes you to become energized, creating a compounding effect. An ops/customer success team needs to be open office so that agents can quickly exchange off the cuff conversations with each other in real time.

The point is, there are different office layouts that work for different types of people & workers.

</comment><comment><USER43> Here is a "revolutionary" idea:

Ask your employees what kind of setup they like and accommodate! Some people like private offices and some people don't - I don't understand why companies look at this in absolute terms.

</comment><comment><USER44> I love open offices, but then, everyone on my floor is part of the same team. Yes, I get a lot more walk up traffic from other team members than I did when I had a private office, but I don't see that as a bad thing. If people are looking for my help, they probably need it, and I'm happy to give it.

Some people are just naturally louder, and yeah, it can be a little distracting. It's not without trade offs. But for every time I have to ask someone to quiet down, there's four or five situations where everyone being easily accessible has been a good thing for getting my job done.

</comment><comment><USER45> The Washington Post got it wrong. One-size-fits-all rules applied to teams containing a variety of people are destroying the workplace.

</comment><comment><USER46> Probably what's more important than the open office plan is the underlying idea : collaboration. Collaboration between various siloed parts of the organization. You can achieve that without creating open offices . When you force an open office where u actually were trying to encourage collaboration it may not always have the effect you were going for

</comment><comment><USER47> It's about noise and distractions. Programming takes concentration and in an open office layout all you see is people trying their best to not be distracted. Why not let good architecture solve that problem instead? Let the experts, architects, do their job and stop second-guessing them.

</comment><comment><USER48> Both is probably the answer here. There is a range of characteristics in people and ideally you need to accommodate them, so if you want to get the best out of your employees you need a range of work environments. The ideal office building would probably be fairly fractal.

</comment><comment><USER49> I was big promoter ofs smaller offices, but it is also wrong. Way forward is location independence and remote teams.

</comment><comment><USER50> google is also aiming at recreating the frat environment for their 20-something workforce. apples and oranges.

I'd lean more on private space for every team working on a single deliverable, but that's just my preference.

<comment><USER51> "Deliverable" is one of words that provokes a "nope" reaction from me. I am not a resource that produces deliverables. I am a human being.

<comment><USER50> you're right, but at some point one needs to describe what a team do - I'm not a native English speaker, and I use what I learned. I accept alternatives, especially if they don't involve a ten word paraphrase of that.

<comment><USER51> How about "work on the same project"?

<comment><USER50> you can have multiple smaller teams working on different aspect of the same project, I've seen project with 50+ devs and I wouldn't put the full project on a single room. but I see your point, it works for small projects, I'll figure out something on those lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Yeah, but it's cheap.

</comment><comment><USER42> <insert beating dead horse gif here>

</comment><comment><USER13> Open plan offices are another bad idea dishonestly sold to tech workers. They aren't more "collaborative". The low-level anxiety and misanthropy that they foster is being informally called "open plan syndrome" by psychiatrists in the Bay Area. People collaborate less in open-plan offices and, while some think their purpose is to intimidate people into working, people actually fuck around way more.

I actually don't think the purpose of open-plan offices is intimidation, nor that they are cheap. It's marketing. "Startup" is now a brand. At high levels, it's an excuse for bad behavior. ("We can't afford the severance cost or publicity of a layoff, so we'll fire 10 percent for phony 'performance' reasons. They knew this was a risk when they joined a _startup_.") For the rest, it's a useful ruse that allows companies that are even more cutthroat (just as young gangsters are typically more violent than older criminals who recognize that bloodshed is bad for business) to somehow present themselves as Not Corporate. And let's be honest: open-plan offices _look_ sleek, busy, and vibrant. They're photogenic. They're also awful places to work, just as Times Square is (to New Yorkers, anyway) an undesirable place to live.

Open-plan offices also raise interesting questions about legality and discrimination. There's a solid argument that they discriminate unfairly against older workers, people with disabilities, and women. I certainly wouldn't go into anywhere typical tech office if I were pregnant; I can handle the open-plan stress with enough meds, but can the baby? The nagging but chronic stress of being visible from behind can't be good for the fetus. So what _should_ the legal status of open-plan offices be? Obviously, they shouldn't be banned outright. Trading floors need them, and companies under 20 people should be allowed to use whatever office space makes sense for them. Ultimately, though, while I think open-plan work environments should be legal, I think the burden of proof out to lie with the employer, and "we're a tech company" is not sufficient. I also think that companies using open-plan offices should be taxed to pay for a public disability fund in order to compensate for the health costs that companies can currently get away with externalizing.</comment>