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Someone at work has decided to split the dev (well all the teams up) so we work in "mixed" rooms, e.g. I'll (and other devs) be in a room with a flash designer, a graphics/designer possibly a marketing bod etc, to increase "cross pollination of ideas". We've been asked for our thinking on this, personally I think it is a bad idea.
One of the problems I am trying to highlight is that, if the dev team is split into three, we'll drift and end up with three ways of working and eventually three different systems without effort to keep it together. I think there is a name for this phenomenon, but can't remember what it is. Can anyone help. Send Codez PLzzzzzzzz URGENTZ*
*I've been in Q&A: it seems this helps to get an answer 
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Maybe a clusterf_ck?
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H
OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre
I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer
Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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Keith Barrow wrote: to increase "cross pollination of ideas"
Only one idea can make it through the pollination barrier. I don't see this working, at all.
my 2 cents
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Slacker007 wrote: I don't see this working, at all.
Yep, pretty much no-one I spoken to thinks it is a good idea.
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Screwing things up....FTUBAR? maybe...
Hmm i wonder why its doing that......ARGHS NO STOP, ROLLBACK ROLLBACK...F*** That's how i learned to "Always Backup"!!
Dogs are man's best Friend,
Cats are man's adorable little serial killer
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Putting devs with anyone who talks a lot is a very bad idea.
I've been forced to sit with support guys before and you cannot concentrate on anything.
If you're stuck with a marketing guy then not only will there be constant noise from him, but it'll all be bullshit too. Multiply the distraction.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
Shed Petition[ ^]
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It's almost as if you are sitting at my desk. Support is on the phone now so I'm not coding. Instead I'm writing the e-mail we've been asked to submit as to why the plan is both bad and wrong or good and pure depending on POV.
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I've turned the ringer off on my desk phone.
Send me an email and I'll look at it when I want to break my concentration.
If it really is so urgent you need my immediate attention then we have both stairs and a lift up to the first floor where I sit, if you cannot be bothered fighting that much gravity then it is not that important.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
Shed Petition[ ^]
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Exactly my thoughts, based on the very same (bad) experience. I have been sitting with people from purchase, yelling on the phone the whole day long at poor supplier who did not supply what they had to.
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Do not feed the troll ! - Common proverb
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I used to work in open plan offices either right next to high bullshit salespeople/consultants or in my previous job, across the dividing wall from reception. If you want to be passively subjected to a ceaseless torrent of truly inane jabbering about clothes, boyfriends, their boyfriend's equipment, celebrities and reality TV, sit near the receptionists. My then boss couldn't understand why I always had my big headphones on. He thought I was being really antisocial and couldn't comprehend that if I had to listen to one more celebrity stalker magazine influenced syllable I would start throwing chairs at them, thus jeopardising my employment. It's because of this mindless babble torture that I got into listening to Sunn(((O))). I needed the loudest droning noise youtube had to offer to block it all out and give me back a semblance of silence.
Another thing on the huge list of things that really get my goat are people who insist on having speakerphone conf calls in an office where everyone else is trying to concentrate. One day a Cisco 7945 is going to get shoved so far up someone's backside that they'll have to stick their fingers up their nose to dial.
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You've not worked on a trading floor, have you? 
Active Noise cancelling headphones and hard House are your friends.
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Keith Barrow wrote: *I've been in Q&A: it seems this helps to get an answer
No chance, you forgot to post your phone number, your username isn't your email address and you didn't start with "hai dears"
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Cross pollination, that’s a new way to say
“We’re cutting back on our budget and will not be hiring anyone else for awhile and we’d like to see more work from you so we are going to cross [insert current buzzword] everybody because we read about this in Forbes or Business Week.”
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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I find myself in the unique position of defending my employer. To be fair, it's pretty well run here, the best dev team I worked in, run closer to a family business than not, and we're currently financially healthy (online bingo does well in a recession as it's a cheaper alternative to going out and getting hammered for our players). I genuinely think the thinking behind this is to help produce new marketing ideas/special offers/ game ideas I also think that it is a wrong move.
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Keith Barrow wrote: I genuinely think the thinking behind this is to help produce new marketing ideas/special offers/ game ideas I also think that it is a wrong move.
You get those ideas in properly controlled situations, they will not fly out randomly during the day just because different people sit near each other.
By all means encourage people to write down any stupid idea that pops into their heads so it doesn't get lost, but ideas need to be discussed and twisted and challenged. You cannot do that and normal work at the same time.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
Shed Petition[ ^]
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You are one of the lucky ones, sounds like you work for a decent place. A company I used to work for, a company that had been bought out and merged several times during my employ there was always looking for ways to cut costs and they came up with clever ways of telling us they wanted more work out of us...
One of the more odd ideas they came up with was when they co-located Engineering and Marketing in an attempt to “streamline” the development cycle. Some clever egghead actually used the term Margineering. All the engineers agreed what they were getting into would definitely be Marginal.
The company I'm with now is one I'm very happy to be a part of. I work in research and for me it's like getting paid to play. 
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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The term that I've heard most often is silos.
I haven't experienced the "mixed" room thing personally, but the developers that I've met that had good things to say about it, also made sure they didn't work that way 100% of the time. It can help with part of the development process, and hinders other parts.
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Bedlam.
Will Rogers never met me.
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"monkey f**** a football" ?
Beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder
Be careful which toes you step on today, they might be connected to the foot that kicks your butt tomorrow.
You can't scare me, I have children.
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Make them read Frederick Brooks The Mythical Man-Month[^] - it's still the best book about the software development process that has any chance of making sense to non-developers.
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It's called JIRA or something like that.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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Start openly discussing issues related to computer science. Use math and inside terminology to dominate the topics. Don't let the Type-As talk, eventually they will get tired of not being able to talk about their golf bags, and that trip they took, complain to management and you will be isolated again. When they say cross pollination of ideas, what they mean is they want programmers to act more like marketers, not marketers to think like programmers.
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That is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard.
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If the flash designer and the marketing person are attractive girls, the desirability of cross polination will probably increase dramatically.
modified 20-Oct-19 21:02pm.
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