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I'm hardly assuming people are all the same -- that's the very thing that places like Bloomberg, which standardize on a one-size-fits-all model for the sake of

by p4wnc6 11y ago

I'm hardly assuming people are all the same -- that's the very thing that places like Bloomberg, which standardize on a one-size-fits-all model for the sake of cheapness yet come up with political stories to plausibly defend it, are doing. I'm saying don't make all seating open-plan. Don't allow mandates for one-size-fits-all seating. For those who require privacy to be productive, spend the money required to give it to them. For those who thrive in a constant communication stream, spend the money to give it to them. I'm not going to Google the pile of evidence mounting against open plan offices for you. But I will say that I worked in quant finance for a while and the idea that an open trading floor is needed, even at the exchange, is a big lie. It's about status and showmanship, and functions as nothing but a hindrance to completing actual job duties. Open-plan fire-drill quant finance was the first work environment that actually showed me how much of a lie it is. Every single person hated it, and at least in part the bonuses and inflated compensation was required just to get people to engage in the Sisyphean task of trying to get their work done in that environment. It was like hiring Usain Bolt and asking him to break the world record for a 100m sprint -- but to do it in your swimming pool. There are many high frequency shops and quant hedge funds where they need real-time audio links between traders, and yet they still organize into private offices and use teleconferencing and workplace chat, and it ends up being far more effective than having them physically colocated. In one case, I even remember one of the primary researchers was given special permission to live in San Francisco even though the entire rest of trading team worked on the East Coast, simply because he had family reasons that required him to be on the West Coast. It didn't degrade communication or knowledge sharing, even in rapid trading situations, at all.

Grishnakh 11y ago
That all sounds great, except that if every single person hates these environments, and there are "many" shops that have private offices, why aren't the places like Bloomberg failing because they can't find qualified people to work there (and/or their productivity is lousy compared to their competitors with private offices)?
- p4wnc6 11y ago
  This is a fallacy of presuming the market (in this case labor) has to be efficient, and that any irrationalities would be arbitraged away (better employer swoops in and eats Bloomberg's lunch by providing better workspace) and so therefore whatever we do happen to observe must be the rational, efficient, market clearing condition. This is absurd of course. If true, then literally every aspect of employment in every company would be the 100% optimal condition as expressed via preference negotiation between employers and candidates and there would be no components of working life that are systematically worse off for the employee. Surely you can't be claiming that? If employment is efficient, why are there things like Occupy Wall St? Not that Occupy is right or wrong, but why would it exist? Why wouldn't those companies, with policies people find socially toxic, fail to find enough applicants and be forced to change policies in response to the market? Their ability to find workers and make money is not very related to whether their practices are unhealthy or destructive, as is the case with open-plan nonsense too. Why do any market irrationalities persist? Often there is an aspect of market manipulation. In the labor market this can occur by focusing on hiring visa-based workers and using their visa status as discreet leverage to force them to never complain about conditions. Many companies also do actively illegal things, like threaten employees with retaliation if they discuss their salary, in efforts to prevent collective bargaining and depress employee negotiation power over attributes like workspace. The more disconcerting thing is the way that younger generations of programmers, basically my generation and younger, have been psychologically manipulated into believing that "dynamic" and "collaborative" are synonymous with open-plan, and they are afraid to express any dissatisfaction lest they are downgraded to "not a team player." It breeds what Michael O. Church described as "macho subordination" -- a desire to compete to be seen as most "loyal" by making a public display of willingness to bottomlessly compromise even basic dignity in the work place, so that anyone who stands up for realistic, humanity-affirming conditions is immediately labeled "toxic" and exiled. The workers enacting this don't even know any better, and few of them have had to take a phone call during the work day about a family tragedy, or discuss an awkward medical condition as they schedule a doctor's appointment, or something, and they place low value on such privacy mostly from a position of naïveté. Anyway, the circular logic of saying markets must be efficient, therefore whatever we observe in markets must be proving their efficiency is patently ridiculous.

by p4wnc6 11y ago

Grishnakh 11y ago

That all sounds great, except that if every single person hates these environments, and there are "many" shops that have private offices, why aren't the places like Bloomberg failing because they can't find qualified people to work there (and/or their productivity is lousy compared to their competitors with private offices)?

p4wnc6 11y ago
This is a fallacy of presuming the market (in this case labor) has to be efficient, and that any irrationalities would be arbitraged away (better employer swoops in and eats Bloomberg's lunch by providing better workspace) and so therefore whatever we do happen to observe must be the rational, efficient, market clearing condition. This is absurd of course. If true, then literally every aspect of employment in every company would be the 100% optimal condition as expressed via preference negotiation between employers and candidates and there would be no components of working life that are systematically worse off for the employee. Surely you can't be claiming that? If employment is efficient, why are there things like Occupy Wall St? Not that Occupy is right or wrong, but why would it exist? Why wouldn't those companies, with policies people find socially toxic, fail to find enough applicants and be forced to change policies in response to the market? Their ability to find workers and make money is not very related to whether their practices are unhealthy or destructive, as is the case with open-plan nonsense too. Why do any market irrationalities persist? Often there is an aspect of market manipulation. In the labor market this can occur by focusing on hiring visa-based workers and using their visa status as discreet leverage to force them to never complain about conditions. Many companies also do actively illegal things, like threaten employees with retaliation if they discuss their salary, in efforts to prevent collective bargaining and depress employee negotiation power over attributes like workspace. The more disconcerting thing is the way that younger generations of programmers, basically my generation and younger, have been psychologically manipulated into believing that "dynamic" and "collaborative" are synonymous with open-plan, and they are afraid to express any dissatisfaction lest they are downgraded to "not a team player." It breeds what Michael O. Church described as "macho subordination" -- a desire to compete to be seen as most "loyal" by making a public display of willingness to bottomlessly compromise even basic dignity in the work place, so that anyone who stands up for realistic, humanity-affirming conditions is immediately labeled "toxic" and exiled. The workers enacting this don't even know any better, and few of them have had to take a phone call during the work day about a family tragedy, or discuss an awkward medical condition as they schedule a doctor's appointment, or something, and they place low value on such privacy mostly from a position of naïveté. Anyway, the circular logic of saying markets must be efficient, therefore whatever we observe in markets must be proving their efficiency is patently ridiculous.