Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to note most people don't know the history of the cubicle and why it was invented in the first place:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubicle

"The office cubicle was created by designer Robert Propst for Herman Miller, and released in 1967 under the name "Action Office II". Although cubicles are often seen as being symbolic of work in a modern office setting due to their uniformity and blandness, they afford the employee a greater degree of privacy and personalization than in previous work environments, which often consisted of desks lined up in rows within an open room.[1][2

Image of an office circa 1937: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Photograph_of_the_Division...

I've never liked the open office layouts anyways. The two companies I worked for used it and it was tremendously noisy and so I usually did anything I could to avoid having to work in the office. Either by going to the cafeteria to work, or staying home. It made both of the teams I worked on very inefficient. The exact opposite goal it was meant to address.

I worked in an office similar to that "1937 office" for a few months in the early 90's -- in Japan.

The desk layout on the "engineering floor" of the building seated senior engineers behind the junior engineers. All the way back to the VP of engineering in the back.

As a foreign visiting engineer from a California startup, I was seated in the back near the VP. I think they were trying to be respectful to me. Engineers then came back to my desk to ask me questions, although I was actually very junior to them. Hilarity ensued, when they actually took my advice.

EDIT: Clarified

It seems all the tech companies in Japan (or at least in Tokyo) still all use open plan spaces for engineers.

Does anyone know of any companies in Japan that offer their engineers private office spaces?

There's another huge reason the cubicle office is dominant: Cubicles are immediately tax deductible, while building out offices is considered a capital improvement, and therefore has to be depreciated over a longer period of time.

Tax law all too frequently shapes behavior, and this is one of those cases.

Yikes. I'd never even considered that.

Do you have any other (terrifying) examples?

I have heard it asserted that the reason for poor construction quality of postwar US commercial buildings in their 39-year depreciation life: http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/irs-depreciation-schedule-...

Hence the lack of much brick or stone, built-for-the-ages construction beyond veneers.

Honestly this is horrifying. The idea that companies are making damaging decisions because they have favorable tax benefits and congress probably didn't even realize it. Well that makes me sad.

Reminds me of the office in the well-known Soviet film, Sluzhebniy Roman (Office Romance) filmed in the Soviet Union in the early 70's. But the senior manager did have her own office which doubled as a conference room.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com