9 ms·

How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

79 points by forrestbrazeal 11y ago

amyjess 11y ago
Cubes get a lot of hate, but I honestly prefer them over an open office. Maybe even better than a solitary office: in my experience, having my own office just felt isolating. I've worked in a cube. I've had my own office. I've shared an office with one other person in a variety of desk arrangements. I currently share a large office with three other people (might as well be an open plan). I'd probably rank the cube second, with sharing an office with one other person as the best (with desks arranged so both our backs are to the wall). Open offices are terrible, terrible things. Next time I interview, I'm going to make sure to ask what their office arrangements are, so I can avoid that situation.
- forrestbrazeal 11y ago
  I think modern office layouts try to get the benefit of "sharing an office with one other person" with huddle rooms. Of course, the problem there comes when you inevitably have to relinquish the huddle room :-)
- mpdehaan2 11y ago
  I was involved in some new-office cost discussions at one point, and while I feel management likes to say open offices are about collaboration, it was really really really about furniture and space costs and employee density. So one answer is given "up the chain" (cost/density) and another is given "down the chain" (collaboration), and that's not cool IMHO. My feeling with open offices is that sales/marketing people like it and most developers can't concentrate. It's not an extrovert issue -- I'm pretty extroverted at times, but coding is one of those things you need to minimize distractions while doing.
  - brazzledazzle 11y ago
    >So one answer is given "up the chain" (cost/density) and another is given "down the chain" (collaboration), and that's not cool IMHO. This kind of crap is so offensive yet so common and most managers have no idea how transparent it usually is.
- yarou 11y ago
  I agree that open offices are, in practice, horrific endeavors. But I think the concept behind them is valid: to foster collaboration and eschew meetings. Given the choice between being stuck in meetings all day and an open office plan, I'd take the open office any day.
  - jamisteven 11y ago
    No, its not. There is a "concept" behind them to justify it in a way that doesnt just spit out "hey, we dont really value you as an employee more than we value a thumbs up from our shareholders". Solitude is necessary for creativity, open floor plans are terrible for cross-collaboration because nobody can concentrate to begin with.
  - taurath 11y ago
    The concept is bullshit though because either everyone is having to fight the distraction of someone else's collaboration or everyone stays quiet so to not distract anyone.
shmerl 11y ago
It's better than open office. Adapting to noisy environment can be challenging. I have circumaural headphones for cases when I need more concentration.
- pc86 11y ago
  For anyone unfamiliar, circumaural headphones are "full size" in that they encompass the ear and are the easiest to block out noise by the physicality alone. Next down in supra-aural that presses into the ear (rather than around it), and then you get to earbuds and in-ear headphones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphones#Types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphones#Types
forrestbrazeal 11y ago
I also think the type of cube makes a difference. I currently work in a cube with high walls (at least 12 inches higher than my head when seated) and somehow the psychological effect of that is much better than a low cube where you're staring in someone else's face all the time.
- eckza 11y ago
  Absolutely, I'd lose my entire mind if I could see over my cube walls.
  - timrichard 11y ago
    My last office stint was open-plan with lockers and hotdesking. Absolutely despised by the developers; we would have been ecstatic with cubes.
  - jtymes 11y ago
    Yeah, we have "high" cubicle walls, but the last 12" is glass which defeats the purpose. I face a walkway and people's heads are in my view as they pass, which can be incredibly distracting. We get a lot of natural light this way which can be great, except when the sun rises right into your eyes with no way to block it.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Printer paper and tape would solve your problem quickly.
      - mathgeek 11y ago
        Yeah, but it's difficult to tape paper on everyone's face as they walk by.
        new_hackers 11y ago
        If you started doing that I bet they'd start choosing another route. Problem solved!
proksoup 11y ago
Open office is a trick to make you beg for the cube farm back.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  I thought OpenOffice was a trick to make you beg for Microsoft Word back. It says it right their on their web site: "Help Spread the Word"! http://www.openoffice.org/download/ http://www.openoffice.org/download/
deagle50 11y ago
I work from home now but I'll take a cube over an "open" office every time.
- deagle50 11y ago
  Forgot to add, my only exception is when working on a team project it helps to be in the same room. Otherwise the open office is a surveillance scheme where everyone is watching everyone else.
jclulow 11y ago
It's important not to over-value pithy quotes from Steve Jobs (or other successful figures). For starters, it's difficult to say if this particular assertion is even well-founded; less likely still that implementing his rhetoric will simply translate into similar success. Work from home actually works for a lot of people. Some of those people are just as creative, collaborative, driven and successful as the folks that work in offices.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  My favorite pithy Steve Jobs quote, from when I was giving him a demo of pie menus on NeWS, is "That sucks! That sucks! That sucks! Oh, that's neat. That sucks!"
bmj 11y ago
His arguments about length of work day and saying "okay, work's done" don't ring true in my opinion. There are plenty of folks in my office who both stay at the office late and do work from home after hours. I think that particular behavior says more about the person than where they work. Personally, I split time between the office and home, and find that works pretty well.
skywhopper 11y ago
I personally am most productive when I'm head-down plowing into some big problem. And from that POV, I do my best work before sunrise in a private office, and I've thrived in environments where I have my own office with a door, and where I've worked remotely. My current employer is all open-office, but also very remote friendly. I live hundreds of miles away so I work remote from my home office, but I've spent a few odd weeks in the office and the environment is actually pretty good for getting stuff done. That said, remote-friendliness is something that's hard to adjust a company's culture to. I've found that heavy use of Slack and the right personalities can lead to a very productive and the sort of spontaneous sync-ups that are somewhat easier to happen in a physical office. Ultimately the real test is whether your company's culture fits with your company's offices, and whether you fit into that culture.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
The emphasis on "face time" is just laziness. Laziness is, however, inevitable. I say that; I've done more good with a five minute hallway discussion ( in terms of heading off an "oh heck no" idea ) than any other technique. but the entire "we need to socialize in order to be successful" thing is sorta mind-numbing. The word that comes after "social" is "engineering."
- bobby_9x 11y ago
  Communication without face-to-face time is still difficult in many ways. A couple of years ago I worked remotely as a software developer. The boss would only give me tasks through email/JIRA and we would have standup meetings daily. Almost every time I was assigned a task, I would be given an extremely vague description. Now normally, this is what we need to deal with as developers, but I could barely get an idea of what we were trying to accomplish with the task. I usually just finished the task with what little information I had and it would have to be re-rewritten almost every time because the boss wanted something different. This was all through email. Some people just don't know how to effectively communicate in writing. They let me go after about a year because they could hire '4 people in India for the cost of my salary'. I had to chuckle.
  - mhurron 11y ago
    I wouldn't blame the communication medium for people clearly not being interested in communicating.
  - douche 11y ago
    I have found that people who are incoherent in text tend not to be any more coherent when they are flapping their gums, either.
  - brazzledazzle 11y ago
    I've dealt with something similar but the manager in that case was a "hunt and peck" typist. Once I saw him typing it all came together. I wouldn't like typing either if it took me several seconds per letter.
awinder 11y ago
2. Career advancement The gripe: Working in a cubicle enslaves you to micromanaging bosses. My view: Working with other people keeps you engaged and visible. Is it anyone's experience that micromanagement is different depending on remote vs. on-site? Maybe micromanagers are less inclined to take remote positions because it could theoretically make it harder to micromanage, but at least in my experience, you can find that attitude wherever you go.
city41 11y ago
I've worked at companies that had completely open spaces, individual offices for everyone, and cubicles. By far my favorite is cubicles. I hate open offices and will actively avoid them. They are noisy, distracting, stressful, and not conducive to productivity. They are conducive to collaboration though. Offices are stifling. They put too many barriers between talking to people, and I found everyone tended to rely on chat and email a lot more. Offices are fantastic when you really want to put your head down and focus. Cubicles are a nice balance between the two extremes. Collaboration is possible and still happens, but privacy and space is still available too. Susan Cain in her book "Quiet" advocates for a space that is basically an open office in the center, with private nooks around the edge, so people can consciously decide when they want to collaborate versus concentrate. I've never been in an environment like that, but it sounds nice.
- forrestbrazeal 11y ago
  I've worked in an environment almost exactly like that: a university library. Now that you mention it, I got a lot of work done in that library...
- character0 11y ago
  My prior job had this setup, but with low walled cubicles for everyone. We kicked the executive team out of their offices and instantly had a ton of conference room space. It was great and prevented a lot of wasted time that normally went to scheduling spaces for meetings.
- stronglikedan 11y ago
  I like my office, and I don't feel that it adds any additional barriers over a cubicle, unless I want it to. I like initiating communication with chat or email, with the option of an impromptu face-to-face meeting if necessary, or the option of being able to defer that meeting when I need to focus. I keep my door open when I don't mind a visitor (like a cubicle), but I can close my door to indicate to people that I am in focus-mode and should not be disturbed. I didn't have that choice with a cubicle, because anyone could walk up at any time and cause me to shift that focus. The office also makes for a good place for uninterrupted collaboration when the meeting requires it, which is something else you don't get with a cubicle.
kfk 11y ago
The thing is: who leaves at 5pm? It's 8:15pm and I am still here (OK, I work in an office, but still). I think working from home you can get free time simply being more productive. I know I would do that. At work, you have to be there, even just to wait that your boss is finished with task A, so that he can finalize task B with you. Then you have the commute, mine is 90 minutes per day. Bottom line: I don't have time, I get home very tired, the work I do could be done in less time or better distributed through the day.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  Are you serious? I'm out of the office by 5 at the latest: I have to catch a bus that stops running at 6:15 and I have a 45-minute commute. I tell my boss when I have to leave, and then I leave by that time. If he needs something from me, it will have to wait until tomorrow unless it's an emergency. Control your own life!
- amyjess 11y ago
  While I typically don't leave as early as 5 (unless I skip lunch), I don't stay much later, either. I'm always out by 6 unless my coworkers and I went out for a ridiculously long lunch or something. The good side of working at a defense contractor.
- jamisteven 11y ago
  "The thing is: who leaves at 5pm?" People with boundaries?
  - cuddlybacon 11y ago
    People who respect themselves.
    - sosborn 11y ago
      That's not really fair. Some people enjoy working like that, some people find that the salary they are making (and enjoying) require those kind of hours, etc.
pbreit 11y ago
I thought this was going to be about cubes vs open plans. Instead it's about office vs remote. I think we all understand that presence is valuable.
Chathamization 11y ago
In an earlier job, we moved from a cubicle office to an open office. The open office was supposedly there to facilitate group work. But we were soon told that since everyone could hear and see what we were doing, we were no longer supposed to meet and talk with colleagues at our desks as we had been doing (too distracting for others).
- carlivar 11y ago
  Companies rarely say what it really is: cost savings. Not only can you cram more people per square foot, cubicle walls cost money.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    In fact it's saving X from area A, where increasing the costs of area B by Y, where X is orders of magnitude smaller than Y, but the manager of B can still claim a bonus for the savings.
- taurath 11y ago
  I'm nervous to start conversations with the idle person next to me, because the person 2 desks over looks like they're concentrating and I don't want to knock them out of flow. What happens in our open office which is half engineering is that nobody says much of anything. It doesn't help collaberation. If we had cubes or god forbid OFFICES with CLOSABLE DOORS we could have 1-1 conversations whenever we like.
peter303 11y ago
Interesting book "Cubed" tells history of offices. Starts with Harry Potter type scriveners before any machine aids, through industrialization where you are just a cog in a vast office pool of business machine operators, through the open offices of today.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
alkonaut 11y ago
I can completely relate to the first two points: I shifted from my own office to working remotely (same job, same colleagues, which makes it a nice experiment) and I find it no easier to do the actual job ,although it's a lot easier to fit 8h of work into the day without the commute. I do miss physical meetings. Not "meetings" but discussions about work problems happening at the coffee machine. You know how you describe a problem to a coworker at the coffee machine and often figure it out as you talk, before you even get an answer? That doesn't happen to me at home. I can explain to a rubber duck but it just stares at me and the insight never comes (neither from it nor from me). I also feel "invisible" at times, which I'm sure is partly just perceived, but that doesn't help. I think the ideal setup is working from home 3-4 days a week, and commuting 1-2 days. As for the office itself, I think open/cube/office is mostly a matter of taste. Offices with doors that open to a shared space is great, did that a long time with good results. If you commute 1 day a week just to get social, open plan is fine (or even better because more social).
famousactress 11y ago
“There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy.” -Steve Jobs The amount of evidence that exists contrary to this statement is staggering. Don't know who this Steve guy is, but he seems like a real dip-shit.
jpenguin 11y ago
How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous. Meetings are toxic. Hours are bullshit. http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-asynchronous/ http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-asynchronous/ I sometimes like face-to-face discussions too, but only with people who are smarter than me.
eikenberry 11y ago
I don't think this is so much about the cubicle as it is about someone who has made themselves comfortable in an enterprise setting. A place where you have to come into the office 9-5 or you're taking PTO, a place where have to put in plenty of face-time so the boss knows you're working hard, and a place where once you leave you have no problem forgetting about the work.
Falkon1313 11y ago
A lot of responses often focus on solitude for creativity vs. distraction and interruptions. Something that I don't see mentioned often is the need for distraction. I'm pretty good at tuning out distractions when I'm focused, sometimes too good (you may need to wave your hand between me and the monitor to get my attention). Unfortunately, sometimes I overfocus and get mental tunnel vision / can't see the forest for the trees. I need to step away from the screen, pace around, maybe grab a clipboard and sketch a diagram, or clear my mind some other way. In my own office, I can do that and the computer's right there when the mental switch flips, the gate opens, and the ideas start to flow again. In an open office, I have to leave the building and may be 10 minutes away from my desk (and subject to several interruptions on the way back). And of course, you always have the feeling of being watched and judged whenever you step away or do something at your desk that doesn't appear to be diligently working. So open offices (or cubicles) can be worse even when you do need distraction.

Cubes get a lot of hate, but I honestly prefer them over an open office. Maybe even better than a solitary office: in my experience, having my own office just felt isolating. I've worked in a cube. I've had my own office. I've shared an office with one other person in a variety of desk arrangements. I currently share a large office with three other people (might as well be an open plan). I'd probably rank the cube second, with sharing an office with one other person as the best (with desks arranged so both our backs are to the wall). Open offices are terrible, terrible things. Next time I interview, I'm going to make sure to ask what their office arrangements are, so I can avoid that situation.

forrestbrazeal 11y ago
I think modern office layouts try to get the benefit of "sharing an office with one other person" with huddle rooms. Of course, the problem there comes when you inevitably have to relinquish the huddle room :-)
mpdehaan2 11y ago
I was involved in some new-office cost discussions at one point, and while I feel management likes to say open offices are about collaboration, it was really really really about furniture and space costs and employee density. So one answer is given "up the chain" (cost/density) and another is given "down the chain" (collaboration), and that's not cool IMHO. My feeling with open offices is that sales/marketing people like it and most developers can't concentrate. It's not an extrovert issue -- I'm pretty extroverted at times, but coding is one of those things you need to minimize distractions while doing.
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  >So one answer is given "up the chain" (cost/density) and another is given "down the chain" (collaboration), and that's not cool IMHO. This kind of crap is so offensive yet so common and most managers have no idea how transparent it usually is.
yarou 11y ago
I agree that open offices are, in practice, horrific endeavors. But I think the concept behind them is valid: to foster collaboration and eschew meetings. Given the choice between being stuck in meetings all day and an open office plan, I'd take the open office any day.
- jamisteven 11y ago
  No, its not. There is a "concept" behind them to justify it in a way that doesnt just spit out "hey, we dont really value you as an employee more than we value a thumbs up from our shareholders". Solitude is necessary for creativity, open floor plans are terrible for cross-collaboration because nobody can concentrate to begin with.
- taurath 11y ago
  The concept is bullshit though because either everyone is having to fight the distraction of someone else's collaboration or everyone stays quiet so to not distract anyone.

shmerl 11y ago

It's better than open office. Adapting to noisy environment can be challenging. I have circumaural headphones for cases when I need more concentration.

pc86 11y ago
For anyone unfamiliar, circumaural headphones are "full size" in that they encompass the ear and are the easiest to block out noise by the physicality alone. Next down in supra-aural that presses into the ear (rather than around it), and then you get to earbuds and in-ear headphones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphones#Types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphones#Types

forrestbrazeal 11y ago

I also think the type of cube makes a difference. I currently work in a cube with high walls (at least 12 inches higher than my head when seated) and somehow the psychological effect of that is much better than a low cube where you're staring in someone else's face all the time.

eckza 11y ago
Absolutely, I'd lose my entire mind if I could see over my cube walls.
- timrichard 11y ago
  My last office stint was open-plan with lockers and hotdesking. Absolutely despised by the developers; we would have been ecstatic with cubes.
- jtymes 11y ago
  Yeah, we have "high" cubicle walls, but the last 12" is glass which defeats the purpose. I face a walkway and people's heads are in my view as they pass, which can be incredibly distracting. We get a lot of natural light this way which can be great, except when the sun rises right into your eyes with no way to block it.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Printer paper and tape would solve your problem quickly.
    - mathgeek 11y ago
      Yeah, but it's difficult to tape paper on everyone's face as they walk by.
      - new_hackers 11y ago
        If you started doing that I bet they'd start choosing another route. Problem solved!

proksoup 11y ago

Open office is a trick to make you beg for the cube farm back.

DonHopkins 11y ago
I thought OpenOffice was a trick to make you beg for Microsoft Word back. It says it right their on their web site: "Help Spread the Word"! http://www.openoffice.org/download/ http://www.openoffice.org/download/

deagle50 11y ago

I work from home now but I'll take a cube over an "open" office every time.

deagle50 11y ago
Forgot to add, my only exception is when working on a team project it helps to be in the same room. Otherwise the open office is a surveillance scheme where everyone is watching everyone else.

jclulow 11y ago

It's important not to over-value pithy quotes from Steve Jobs (or other successful figures). For starters, it's difficult to say if this particular assertion is even well-founded; less likely still that implementing his rhetoric will simply translate into similar success. Work from home actually works for a lot of people. Some of those people are just as creative, collaborative, driven and successful as the folks that work in offices.

DonHopkins 11y ago
My favorite pithy Steve Jobs quote, from when I was giving him a demo of pie menus on NeWS, is "That sucks! That sucks! That sucks! Oh, that's neat. That sucks!"

bmj 11y ago

His arguments about length of work day and saying "okay, work's done" don't ring true in my opinion. There are plenty of folks in my office who both stay at the office late and do work from home after hours. I think that particular behavior says more about the person than where they work. Personally, I split time between the office and home, and find that works pretty well.

skywhopper 11y ago

I personally am most productive when I'm head-down plowing into some big problem. And from that POV, I do my best work before sunrise in a private office, and I've thrived in environments where I have my own office with a door, and where I've worked remotely. My current employer is all open-office, but also very remote friendly. I live hundreds of miles away so I work remote from my home office, but I've spent a few odd weeks in the office and the environment is actually pretty good for getting stuff done. That said, remote-friendliness is something that's hard to adjust a company's culture to. I've found that heavy use of Slack and the right personalities can lead to a very productive and the sort of spontaneous sync-ups that are somewhat easier to happen in a physical office. Ultimately the real test is whether your company's culture fits with your company's offices, and whether you fit into that culture.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

The emphasis on "face time" is just laziness. Laziness is, however, inevitable. I say that; I've done more good with a five minute hallway discussion ( in terms of heading off an "oh heck no" idea ) than any other technique. but the entire "we need to socialize in order to be successful" thing is sorta mind-numbing. The word that comes after "social" is "engineering."

bobby_9x 11y ago
Communication without face-to-face time is still difficult in many ways. A couple of years ago I worked remotely as a software developer. The boss would only give me tasks through email/JIRA and we would have standup meetings daily. Almost every time I was assigned a task, I would be given an extremely vague description. Now normally, this is what we need to deal with as developers, but I could barely get an idea of what we were trying to accomplish with the task. I usually just finished the task with what little information I had and it would have to be re-rewritten almost every time because the boss wanted something different. This was all through email. Some people just don't know how to effectively communicate in writing. They let me go after about a year because they could hire '4 people in India for the cost of my salary'. I had to chuckle.
- mhurron 11y ago
  I wouldn't blame the communication medium for people clearly not being interested in communicating.
- douche 11y ago
  I have found that people who are incoherent in text tend not to be any more coherent when they are flapping their gums, either.
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  I've dealt with something similar but the manager in that case was a "hunt and peck" typist. Once I saw him typing it all came together. I wouldn't like typing either if it took me several seconds per letter.

awinder 11y ago

2. Career advancement The gripe: Working in a cubicle enslaves you to micromanaging bosses. My view: Working with other people keeps you engaged and visible. Is it anyone's experience that micromanagement is different depending on remote vs. on-site? Maybe micromanagers are less inclined to take remote positions because it could theoretically make it harder to micromanage, but at least in my experience, you can find that attitude wherever you go.

city41 11y ago

I've worked at companies that had completely open spaces, individual offices for everyone, and cubicles. By far my favorite is cubicles. I hate open offices and will actively avoid them. They are noisy, distracting, stressful, and not conducive to productivity. They are conducive to collaboration though. Offices are stifling. They put too many barriers between talking to people, and I found everyone tended to rely on chat and email a lot more. Offices are fantastic when you really want to put your head down and focus. Cubicles are a nice balance between the two extremes. Collaboration is possible and still happens, but privacy and space is still available too. Susan Cain in her book "Quiet" advocates for a space that is basically an open office in the center, with private nooks around the edge, so people can consciously decide when they want to collaborate versus concentrate. I've never been in an environment like that, but it sounds nice.

forrestbrazeal 11y ago
I've worked in an environment almost exactly like that: a university library. Now that you mention it, I got a lot of work done in that library...
character0 11y ago
My prior job had this setup, but with low walled cubicles for everyone. We kicked the executive team out of their offices and instantly had a ton of conference room space. It was great and prevented a lot of wasted time that normally went to scheduling spaces for meetings.
stronglikedan 11y ago
I like my office, and I don't feel that it adds any additional barriers over a cubicle, unless I want it to. I like initiating communication with chat or email, with the option of an impromptu face-to-face meeting if necessary, or the option of being able to defer that meeting when I need to focus. I keep my door open when I don't mind a visitor (like a cubicle), but I can close my door to indicate to people that I am in focus-mode and should not be disturbed. I didn't have that choice with a cubicle, because anyone could walk up at any time and cause me to shift that focus. The office also makes for a good place for uninterrupted collaboration when the meeting requires it, which is something else you don't get with a cubicle.

kfk 11y ago

The thing is: who leaves at 5pm? It's 8:15pm and I am still here (OK, I work in an office, but still). I think working from home you can get free time simply being more productive. I know I would do that. At work, you have to be there, even just to wait that your boss is finished with task A, so that he can finalize task B with you. Then you have the commute, mine is 90 minutes per day. Bottom line: I don't have time, I get home very tired, the work I do could be done in less time or better distributed through the day.

HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
Are you serious? I'm out of the office by 5 at the latest: I have to catch a bus that stops running at 6:15 and I have a 45-minute commute. I tell my boss when I have to leave, and then I leave by that time. If he needs something from me, it will have to wait until tomorrow unless it's an emergency. Control your own life!
amyjess 11y ago
While I typically don't leave as early as 5 (unless I skip lunch), I don't stay much later, either. I'm always out by 6 unless my coworkers and I went out for a ridiculously long lunch or something. The good side of working at a defense contractor.
jamisteven 11y ago
"The thing is: who leaves at 5pm?" People with boundaries?
- cuddlybacon 11y ago
  People who respect themselves.
  - sosborn 11y ago
    That's not really fair. Some people enjoy working like that, some people find that the salary they are making (and enjoying) require those kind of hours, etc.

pbreit 11y ago

I thought this was going to be about cubes vs open plans. Instead it's about office vs remote. I think we all understand that presence is valuable.

Chathamization 11y ago

In an earlier job, we moved from a cubicle office to an open office. The open office was supposedly there to facilitate group work. But we were soon told that since everyone could hear and see what we were doing, we were no longer supposed to meet and talk with colleagues at our desks as we had been doing (too distracting for others).

carlivar 11y ago
Companies rarely say what it really is: cost savings. Not only can you cram more people per square foot, cubicle walls cost money.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  In fact it's saving X from area A, where increasing the costs of area B by Y, where X is orders of magnitude smaller than Y, but the manager of B can still claim a bonus for the savings.
taurath 11y ago
I'm nervous to start conversations with the idle person next to me, because the person 2 desks over looks like they're concentrating and I don't want to knock them out of flow. What happens in our open office which is half engineering is that nobody says much of anything. It doesn't help collaberation. If we had cubes or god forbid OFFICES with CLOSABLE DOORS we could have 1-1 conversations whenever we like.

peter303 11y ago

Interesting book "Cubed" tells history of offices. Starts with Harry Potter type scriveners before any machine aids, through industrialization where you are just a cog in a vast office pool of business machine operators, through the open offices of today.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

alkonaut 11y ago

I can completely relate to the first two points: I shifted from my own office to working remotely (same job, same colleagues, which makes it a nice experiment) and I find it no easier to do the actual job ,although it's a lot easier to fit 8h of work into the day without the commute. I do miss physical meetings. Not "meetings" but discussions about work problems happening at the coffee machine. You know how you describe a problem to a coworker at the coffee machine and often figure it out as you talk, before you even get an answer? That doesn't happen to me at home. I can explain to a rubber duck but it just stares at me and the insight never comes (neither from it nor from me). I also feel "invisible" at times, which I'm sure is partly just perceived, but that doesn't help. I think the ideal setup is working from home 3-4 days a week, and commuting 1-2 days. As for the office itself, I think open/cube/office is mostly a matter of taste. Offices with doors that open to a shared space is great, did that a long time with good results. If you commute 1 day a week just to get social, open plan is fine (or even better because more social).

famousactress 11y ago

“There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy.” -Steve Jobs The amount of evidence that exists contrary to this statement is staggering. Don't know who this Steve guy is, but he seems like a real dip-shit.

jpenguin 11y ago

How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous. Meetings are toxic. Hours are bullshit. http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-asynchronous/ http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-asynchronous/ I sometimes like face-to-face discussions too, but only with people who are smarter than me.

eikenberry 11y ago

I don't think this is so much about the cubicle as it is about someone who has made themselves comfortable in an enterprise setting. A place where you have to come into the office 9-5 or you're taking PTO, a place where have to put in plenty of face-time so the boss knows you're working hard, and a place where once you leave you have no problem forgetting about the work.

Falkon1313 11y ago

A lot of responses often focus on solitude for creativity vs. distraction and interruptions. Something that I don't see mentioned often is the need for distraction. I'm pretty good at tuning out distractions when I'm focused, sometimes too good (you may need to wave your hand between me and the monitor to get my attention). Unfortunately, sometimes I overfocus and get mental tunnel vision / can't see the forest for the trees. I need to step away from the screen, pace around, maybe grab a clipboard and sketch a diagram, or clear my mind some other way. In my own office, I can do that and the computer's right there when the mental switch flips, the gate opens, and the ideas start to flow again. In an open office, I have to leave the building and may be 10 minutes away from my desk (and subject to several interruptions on the way back). And of course, you always have the feeling of being watched and judged whenever you step away or do something at your desk that doesn't appear to be diligently working. So open offices (or cubicles) can be worse even when you do need distraction.