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I've worked for several big companies (though not Facebook, Google, Apple, or others in that class). None of them showed any interest in analyzing developer pro

I've worked for several big companies (though not Facebook, Google, Apple, or others in that class). None of them showed any interest in analyzing developer productivity, much less looking for ways to increase it. My gut instinct is that developer productivity is hard to measure, real estate costs are easy to measure, so you end up with 500 people in a noisy environment doing the work that 100 could do in a quiet environment. I also suspect there's a status thing going on. People working on the floor are lower status than people with offices, and I suspect some execs find status signaling more desirable than productivity.

Swizec 10y ago
Exactly! This isn't a problem of one office design or another. It's a problem of misaligned incentives between individual workers and the people making these decisions. I don't think there's a solution for that.
brazzledazzle 10y ago
I think that hard to measure consequences vs easy to measure financial impacts are why so many companies go down the path of mediocrity one small change at a time. "If we make people jump through all of these hoops for software/hardware/whatever we save $X per year." HR, finance, corp IT and facility management in big companies rarely factor in employee happiness because you can't put that as a line item in the budget. Their priorities become aligned with their own interests. HR is starting to wise up as evidenced by improving benefits packages and various industry publications. And while that's good that's probably a consequence of being held directly accountable for recruiting and retention which doesn't translate readily to other departments. There's still a dramatic disconnect between various departments and what benefits the company as a whole.