The other deep irony is that many tech companies ruined the office by forcing open office designs. It was no secret that employees found them difficult places to be productive. And now they wonder why nobody wants to go there.
Going back to actual offices with doors would be way better for employees’ health.
Cubicles are still a way to treat employees like cattle. Except that this free-range approach to cubicles mixes the worst of cubicles with not having ways to deal with interruption, distraction, noise.
That doesn't mean open space offices are better. Free range cattle is still cattle, isn't it?
Working from home is like working in your private office, which in the 90s was reported as a perk and a status symbol.
Offices are great! Unless they're internal and don't have windows (although some people definitely still like them).
Cubicles are great! Unless they're in giant internal rooms that don't have windows, or don't have enough windows / the right kind of windows for the space (although some people definitely still like them).
AFAICT it's not that cubicles sucked, it's that they correlated with a bunch of things that made the job also suck, but cubicles were an easy thing to refer to about that kind of workplace culture.
...arguably, the same can be said about a chunk (but not all) of the complaints around open offices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_Wax_Headquarters
That's an open office plan from ~1930, that, IMHO, is designed with the people who're gonna be working in it in mind.
Edit: I think this photo might be from much closer to construction. It's even more sparse / a lot less crowded:
https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2014/04/30/realestate/comm...
Open plan is just awful. Everyone can watch you and nobody does any work and its so loud and impossible to talk on the phone.
Meanwhile, my wife is dealing with health issues, but can't speak English very well. So I have to talk to various doctors' offices and insurance companies all the time, and every time I make a call I feel the need to hoof it across the building so I'm not blasting medical details into the cube farm. The quiet rooms are usually all full of people in meetings, so I have to hide in the mail room or walk a couple of blocks to my car.
I'm done with this shit.. I think I'm going to hop ship after my next $100k RSU vesting, this kind of work is just too undignified for me
If cube farms or offices with doors are so much better, where are the companies without open-offices and outsized performance financials.
I suspect most employees just aren't that productive for it to matter much.
There is probably some small percentage who are more productive, and even fewer who are much more productive, but their needs are overwhelming by larger business decisions, and fads in management and design.
Then again peacooks have like huge swag backs for no good reason other than looks.
I feel the concept of open offices are abit like agile. It is a virtue signaling "cult".
It doesn't matter it is counterproductive. You just need it to get the female peacooks.
Literally any of the top companies in the DOW Jones - very few offices are open plan - tech is an outlier here
Conway’s law may result in products’ appeal, thus what people are willing to pay for.
This is correct. The first capacitive touchscreen phone was the LG Prada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
Interestingly, it came out just before the iPhone, and LG even alleged that Apple had stolen the idea from them. Considering how Jobs stole a bunch of ideas from PARC, and Apple really doesn't have a history of inventing anything, but rather taking other peoples' ideas and commercializing them better, it seems very plausible.