21
votes
Accepted
Does talking to a rubber duck improve programmer performance when debugging?
You're not going to find studies that do something like compare the effectiveness of a rubber duck vs a stuffed parrot specifically for programmers working on debugging tasks, nor can we really ...
- 3,839
16
votes
Accepted
Does innovation or productivity per resident increase by 15 percent, every time the size of a city doubles?
This claim stems from theoretical physicist and urban theorist Geoffrey West, portrayed in this NYT article. The paper is called Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities (PNAS 2007, ...
- 409
15
votes
Do Open-Plan Offices have productivity advantages?
Abstract
It depends. Among other things, it depends on how it's managed and what the occupants' expectations of sound-field are. Most organizations implementing open plan outside the financial ...
- 267
14
votes
Accepted
Did Lord Kelvin say "If you can not measure it, you can not improve it"?
He didn't say that exact quote; Lord Kelvin tended towards rambling, so if you see any particularly pithy one-liner quotes, it probably wasn't him. His actual quote?
I often say that when you can ...
- 2,096
3
votes
What study showed that using headphones to drown out office noise is detrimental?
"Music is considered an ecologically valid auditory stimulus since many different brain centers can be activated through functional dissociation between the ventral and dorsal networks involved in ...
- 22.7k
3
votes
Accepted
Does "startup employee effectiveness follow a power law"?
I've found an interview with Laurent Bossavit, were he discusses his book "The Leprechauns of Software Engineering". He makes that claim that the "10x Programmer" is for small sample sets with very ...
- 1,514
1
vote
Do workplace performance appraisals and workplace goal-setting exercises hurt morale?
Current understanding for appraisals
Appraisals which are not linked to monetary outcomes such as bonuses, promotions, or pay rises seem to have detrimental effects for some types of employees.
...
- 22.7k
1
vote
Do programmers who learn to type faster become better programmers?
According to Cognitive Consequences of Programming: Augmentations to Basic Instruction Journal of Educational Computing Research , volume 2, pages 75-93 (1986):
Teachers we surveyed recommended ...
- 104k
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