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Ask HN: Is it wrong for me to look at my coworkers screens?

5 points by 0wl3x ↗ HN
I work at a small startup of about 25 engineers. We all work at one large long table in our office. Most engineers have either one or two screens. When I get up to go to the bathroom or get water, I don't make a point to NOT look at the screens of the other engineers at the company. Meaning, as I walk through the room I usually notice what everyone else is looking at on their computers. I'd also like to mention that I sit on the corner of this desk, and frequently have people walking behind me all day. I operate with the assumption that people are looking / can see what I'm doing all day. I broached this topic with some other colleagues and the opinions widely ranged from "How could you do that?!" to "Yeah that's okay I do this too". What do you guys think? Is this a bad habit?

6 comments

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nasirmaziz
If the screens are visible to all and no one is attempting to hide them then there is no harm in passing a quick peek. However as proper etiquettes would dictate, it is not good manners to just stop and stare at someone's screens without letting them know or asking first.

Reading newspapers over someone's shoulder is frowned upon and is considered bad manners. You can apply the same analogy here as well. And use common sense in such conditions. Not all matters are binary.

In your case, you can purchase privacy overlay screens and apply them to your monitors if you don't feel comfortable sharing yours.

scaryclam
As long as you're not standing behind someone for too long staring, and you're not watching their keyboard as they type passwords, I don't see a problem with looking at someone else's screen as you pass by.

IME, the people who have a problem with it are either 1) doing work that shouldn't be on an outward facing screen (for example, working with sensitive data) 2) doing things they probably shouldn't be doing or 3) people who are a bit sensitive that they think everyone's thinking that they're a 2 if they happen to be reading HN in their break time :)

Finnucane
Isn't this why you have an open office? To remove any bit of privacy you might have at work?
grawprog
You're at work using a company computer I assume. Why would you havw any reason not to look. My programming room has 3 computers with 4 screens in a row. I look at what my coworker does all the time. Sometimes I even just sit and stare. He operates different machines than I do but I've learned a lot about programming it just from watching him. I watch what all my coworkers do especially the more experienced ones. It's how I learn.
kysol
If someone was working on privileged information (financials etc) then yeah it's probably not great to look at the screen, but if everyone is working on the same projects, then there shouldn't be any restrictions.

Personally, I'm the only one I work with to have my screens facing out to the public eye. Hiding behind screens just invites distractions. There's nothing that could be on my screens that is sensitive enough to hide. Even if other developers saw what was there, the worst that could happen would be 5 minutes trying to explain what a specific core function did, and an hour wasted trying to get out of a trivial one sided conversation about conspiracies all stemming from how their component doesn't handle multibyte characters and how they have to strip them out (yeah don't ask, just don't... best not to).