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Honestly I think the noise and chaos of open offices are positives to executives because it creates the appearance of work. I follow some of the executives of

Honestly I think the noise and chaos of open offices are positives to executives because it creates the appearance of work. I follow some of the executives of the company I work at (we have an open office) and they are constantly posting pictures of "teamwork and collaboration" that just have a bunch of people standing around each others desks talking. They see all the movement and noise and they love that it seems like everybody is hard at work, collaborating and discussing problems etc. But if you look a little closer, the people doing actual work are hunched over their desks with huge headphones on, and everybody standing around are either not talking about anything related to work or they are rehashing discussions that have already happened over IM/email/meetings. I expressed to my manager that I had a hard time working in this environment and would like the chance to work from home a more often but was dismissed because he "likes the open office" and our management has the view that if you are working from home you probably aren't working.

dbattaglia 8y ago
Funny anecdote about that: I briefly worked in one of those "startup inside a megacorp" companies, which had the typical trendy NYC startup look, open floor plan, free snacks and lunch, etc. Fairly often, you would see upper management types from the headquarters walking investors around. One of my coworkers, who worked for the company for many years, believed that we were basically just a zoo to look exciting for the investors compared to the stuffy corporate office. Good developer, here's a banana! Of course I don't think that's necessarily 100% true, but it always stuck with me.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I think this is pretty close to being 100% true. Expensive tech workers function more like office furniture in most companies, where the executives don’t actually care about productivity anyway, beyond a few senior engineers who decide everything anyway.
  - talmand 8y ago
    In a previous job I once had a VP make a quick run-through of the office to make sure everybody was at their desks doing something, anything. The reason being that they were about to walk clients through the space and wanted the appearance of hard work being done. The VP was very open about this reasoning with us as he was herding people into place. I believe a few people sat at different desks because their regular desks were away from the path.
    - dbattaglia 8y ago
      Oh yeah I've been there as well. I've also seen upper management insist on adding more infrastructure monitors on the walls for the same reason: clients think they look cool!
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        Wow, I remember being a junior guy long ago and getting assigned this task. They brought in two huge (at the time) monitors and had me set them up to show “real time” graphs and plots. Didn’t matter what the data was, just find a computer, plug it into those monitors and show some techinal-looking ambiance for the 15 minutes that some investor or other big shot will be in the room.
    - mikec3010 8y ago
      This is eerily similar of the stories about guided tours of Pyongyang.
- waylandsmithers 8y ago
  Yes, just like suits in hardhats walking through rows of humming machines on the factory floor. Things are getting done.
- 4029dlsdkld 8y ago
  At my first startup job upper management would explicitly tell everybody to come in early and look busy whenever there was a board meeting or investors around.
  - yourapostasy 8y ago
    Lest someone think that description is hyperbolic, this is a real, recent event at IBM [1]. The audience was a marketing department, so the "spiff up the cubicles" talk isn't solely aimed at technical staff, it is everyone (except perhaps sales?). /r/IBM is an IBM-controlled sub, and the original was deleted by the IBM-employed mod, hence the screencap. [1] https://i.imgur.com/ajC1kNk.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ajC1kNk.jpg
dougmwne 8y ago
Your bit about executive perception is a great point. I think that's a huge reason why our offices and workdays look the way they look, why we spend so much time in meetings, why WFH has so much resistance. The executives tend to be extroverted and at the top of the primate social-power higherarchy. Much of this is unconscious, or at least un-admitted, but the people in charge of our offices get a rush when their subordinates visably do the work. They enjoy people gathering around them and telling them about the issue of the day. To an extrovert at the top of the ladder, that power wouldn't feel as good if it was manifested solely as Jira tickets, slack pings, and performance dashboards in a home office. They would not feel nearly as important. One open office I worked regularly flew in parent company executives from around the world so they could watch all that geeky brainpower under their command grinding away at our Macbooks. I think this psychology has had a cumulative effect on creating our work culture. Did an individual executive decide to build your office based on how it made them feel? No probablly not, but when you take the psychological profiles of all business leaders together you get the open office, the business trip, and the all day meeting.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  That's an interesting theory. It made me think of another: perhaps executives wrongly assume that what's a productive environment for them and their tasks is appropriate for everyone in the organization.
- Melchizedek 8y ago
  Even worse for the managers, WFH would reveal how mostly unnecessary they are.
  - sidlls 8y ago
    Except for doing all the stuff "100% heads down coders" don't want to do, like run the parts of the business that actually bring in revenue, you mean.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      Right, I think some people honestly think that software just magically leaps from developers’ fingertips onto store shelves. Product management, project management, operations, marketing, legal, sales, BD? They just sit in meetings and play Candy Crush all day...
beamatronic 8y ago
If they want appearance of work, just look at the Kanban board!
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  Or build a fancy display with lots of blinkenlights that shows git activity, CI build activity, network activity, slack activity, etc. It doesn't even need to really show anything, just say it does. Kind of like the Connection Machine's random blinkenlights "activity mode".
gaius 8y ago
Read IBM’s instructions to workers before the CEO visits: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/28/ibm_chief_rometty_texas_staff/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/28/ibm_chief_rometty_t...

dbattaglia 8y ago

Funny anecdote about that: I briefly worked in one of those "startup inside a megacorp" companies, which had the typical trendy NYC startup look, open floor plan, free snacks and lunch, etc. Fairly often, you would see upper management types from the headquarters walking investors around. One of my coworkers, who worked for the company for many years, believed that we were basically just a zoo to look exciting for the investors compared to the stuffy corporate office. Good developer, here's a banana! Of course I don't think that's necessarily 100% true, but it always stuck with me.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I think this is pretty close to being 100% true. Expensive tech workers function more like office furniture in most companies, where the executives don’t actually care about productivity anyway, beyond a few senior engineers who decide everything anyway.
- talmand 8y ago
  In a previous job I once had a VP make a quick run-through of the office to make sure everybody was at their desks doing something, anything. The reason being that they were about to walk clients through the space and wanted the appearance of hard work being done. The VP was very open about this reasoning with us as he was herding people into place. I believe a few people sat at different desks because their regular desks were away from the path.
  - dbattaglia 8y ago
    Oh yeah I've been there as well. I've also seen upper management insist on adding more infrastructure monitors on the walls for the same reason: clients think they look cool!
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      Wow, I remember being a junior guy long ago and getting assigned this task. They brought in two huge (at the time) monitors and had me set them up to show “real time” graphs and plots. Didn’t matter what the data was, just find a computer, plug it into those monitors and show some techinal-looking ambiance for the 15 minutes that some investor or other big shot will be in the room.
  - mikec3010 8y ago
    This is eerily similar of the stories about guided tours of Pyongyang.
waylandsmithers 8y ago
Yes, just like suits in hardhats walking through rows of humming machines on the factory floor. Things are getting done.
4029dlsdkld 8y ago
At my first startup job upper management would explicitly tell everybody to come in early and look busy whenever there was a board meeting or investors around.
- yourapostasy 8y ago
  Lest someone think that description is hyperbolic, this is a real, recent event at IBM [1]. The audience was a marketing department, so the "spiff up the cubicles" talk isn't solely aimed at technical staff, it is everyone (except perhaps sales?). /r/IBM is an IBM-controlled sub, and the original was deleted by the IBM-employed mod, hence the screencap. [1] https://i.imgur.com/ajC1kNk.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ajC1kNk.jpg

dougmwne 8y ago

Your bit about executive perception is a great point. I think that's a huge reason why our offices and workdays look the way they look, why we spend so much time in meetings, why WFH has so much resistance. The executives tend to be extroverted and at the top of the primate social-power higherarchy. Much of this is unconscious, or at least un-admitted, but the people in charge of our offices get a rush when their subordinates visably do the work. They enjoy people gathering around them and telling them about the issue of the day. To an extrovert at the top of the ladder, that power wouldn't feel as good if it was manifested solely as Jira tickets, slack pings, and performance dashboards in a home office. They would not feel nearly as important. One open office I worked regularly flew in parent company executives from around the world so they could watch all that geeky brainpower under their command grinding away at our Macbooks. I think this psychology has had a cumulative effect on creating our work culture. Did an individual executive decide to build your office based on how it made them feel? No probablly not, but when you take the psychological profiles of all business leaders together you get the open office, the business trip, and the all day meeting.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
That's an interesting theory. It made me think of another: perhaps executives wrongly assume that what's a productive environment for them and their tasks is appropriate for everyone in the organization.
Melchizedek 8y ago
Even worse for the managers, WFH would reveal how mostly unnecessary they are.
- sidlls 8y ago
  Except for doing all the stuff "100% heads down coders" don't want to do, like run the parts of the business that actually bring in revenue, you mean.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    Right, I think some people honestly think that software just magically leaps from developers’ fingertips onto store shelves. Product management, project management, operations, marketing, legal, sales, BD? They just sit in meetings and play Candy Crush all day...

beamatronic 8y ago

If they want appearance of work, just look at the Kanban board!

jonhendry18 8y ago
Or build a fancy display with lots of blinkenlights that shows git activity, CI build activity, network activity, slack activity, etc. It doesn't even need to really show anything, just say it does. Kind of like the Connection Machine's random blinkenlights "activity mode".

gaius 8y ago

Read IBM’s instructions to workers before the CEO visits: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/28/ibm_chief_rometty_texas_staff/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/28/ibm_chief_rometty_t...