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Comment by andrewingram | Hacker News Reader

Curiously, in my experience it's been senior management (including CEOs) who've fought for open plan offices in the first place. Cost benefits aside, they do wax lyrical about all the reason why open plan is great.

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Elites of any description are usually in favour of measures that cut costs and increase surveillance and control, until those same measures are applied to them. At that point, they don't reverse the measures in question, they use special pleading to justify carving out an exemption for themselves.

Because they have allowed tail functions like HR and Building Services to set company policy with no thought to the wider effect on the company. Aka I got my bonus and I don't care if I have F%$Ked up the company

At a previous job, I was sent to a partner company who was building a web site we'd take over. This company had a wide open floor plan (except for the execs). I remember one day our HR VP visiting and exclaiming how wonderful this is. She said she wanted to implement it where we worked. She asked me what I thought with this beatific smile, and I said I found the never ending movement and ad-hoc meetings around me to be distracting. The smile on her face dropped and she said, "You'll get used to it", as she walked away.

"At a previous job ..."

Quite.

CFO's don't get bonuses for increasing productivity.

They get bonuses because they "saved" the companies millions by cramming more workers in a smaller space. Then they get another bonus to figure out how to cram more workers in, because for some weird reason productivity has gone downhill.

Same here. Interestingly their meeting rooms whre they spend most of their time aren't open space and have nice big windows. They also have nice offices for themselves.

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