[time-nuts] Help with HP 8640B generator

[Bob Paddock]

> The cubicle?

Anti-Productivity Pods: Cubicles as Dilbert so astutely noted.

"For my money the most important work on software productivity in the
last 20 years
 is DeMarco and Lister's Peopleware (1987 Dorset House Publishing, NY
NY). For a decade
 the authors conducted coding wars at a number of different companies,
pitting teams
 against each other on a standard set of software problems. The
results showed that,
 using any measure of performance (speed, defects, etc.) the average of those
 in the 1st quartile outperformed the average in the 4th quartile by a
factor of 2.6.

 Surprisingly, none of the factors you'd expect to matter correlated to the best
 and worst performers. Even experience mattered little, as long as the
programmers
 had been working for at least 6 months. They did find a very strong correlation
 between the office environment and team performance. Needless
interruptions yielded
 poor performance. The best teams had private (read "quiet") offices
and phones with
 "off" switches. Their study suggests that quiet time saves vast
amounts of money.

 Think about this. The almost minor tweak of getting some quiet time can,
 according to their data, multiply your productivity by 260%!
 That's an astonishing result. For the same salary your boss pays you now,
 he'd get essentially 2.6 of you." -- Jack Ganssle in The Embedded Muse #25.

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