> "Cubicles are like human chicken farming. They have always been bad for anything other than kind of factory farming kind of approach to the office," he said.
Having worked both in a cubicle and an open office, I'd take the cubicle any day of the week.
Maybe a certain type of cramped cubicle is bad, but in the company I worked for we had large desks, neck and chest-height dividers, and teams faced opposite from one another, so it fostered collaboration, while maintaining a sense of privacy.
The open office OTOH had no sense of privacy, and you could hear conversations from several desks away. Wearing headphones to block out the noise was the only way to get some work done, but there was nothing you could do about visual distractions in your peripheral vision. It was awful.
> "Put people in tiny little footprint because it takes less money than an enclosed office and we can kind of keep an eye on them."
On the contrary, the open floor plan popularized by Google et al was always loved by managers for this reason, not the cubicle farm.
> Wilkinson envisions big, open spaces with couches and cozy nooks as work stations that are not assigned to any single employee. An environment where it's easy to hang out and chat.
No, thanks. I'll keep working from home or remotely from wherever I want rather than in your open space office.