It still amazes me to this day that managers refuse to see that developers, or more specifically coders, have requirements that go above and beyond their typical ‘office’ coworkers. Here’s a short list of items that piss me off on a daily basis  

Speaker phones for everyone

For the love of God, why do people in a cubical farm need to use speaker phones? Get rid of them, and the inconsiderate employees that think it doesn’t disturb anyone. That goes for the managers that have windowed offices but refuse to shut their doors. Speaker phones should be restricted to meeting rooms.

Sitting near walk ways

I need to focus on code. My code is on my monitor. My monitor is at eye level. If anyone walks within my near 180 degree field of view, I get distracted.

Monitor Policies

At my current place of employment, everyone has two options, you can have a single 22″ LCD or two 17″ LCDs. For developers, both options are unproductive. 17″ monitors just don’t have adequate resolution, and the single 22″ has me alt-tabbing between applications if I am on Windows or switching spaces on my Mac. Two widescreen LCDs might seem like a luxury to someone in Accounting, but it actually makes my job more efecient.

IT Homogenization

It’s not good enough to have me sitting in “the IT” department, I need to sit with other coders. It’s not that I don’t like to be around other people in the department, but we just tend to have different philosophies on how to work effeciently. Architecture and Planning work best when they have adhoc meetings at their cubicle, but I need silence. Human Resources like to talk about the weekend, but I need silence. IT support staff need to be one the phones all the time, but I need silence. There is an obvious pattern here.