7 ms·

Wasn't the "hype" a lightweight misdirection from the fact that putting employees in the smallest/cheapest amount of square footage was always the goal?

• hotsauceror 8y ago
  Of course it was. It is surprising to see how often this kind of PR-driven messaging is accepted at face value by the business press, academics, etc. Nonetheless, it's not enough to dismiss a statement based on the ulterior motives behind its utterance; someone still has to collect the data to prove or disprove it.
• mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  Many companies already spend inefficiently (from a productivity point of view) on stupid lavish office features like gourmet coffee stations, video game rooms, roof decks, or things like booze-focused parties. I don’t get why anyone believes open-plan offices are chosen to save money. Maybe in the most spartan of bootstrapped startups, sure, but most of the time it’s for optics and status signalling, part of turning the office into a shrine to the executives. Companies have been studying, measuring and carefully quantifying knowledge worker productivity for a hundred years. The idea that “productivity lost to open spaces is hard to measure, but short term savings is an obvious win on paper” is silly. Companies are not that stupid. No, open plan offices are deliberately chosen for status and optics, and to some extent to make the environment routinize your fealty as a worker and ingrain into your mind the obvious fact that your productivity isn’t valued; that your economic worth in most of these companies is higher if you function like a decorative piece of furniture.
  • ghaff 8y ago
    I expect most companies who do it genuinely believe it's what the cool kids are doing for all sorts of good reasons. But it doesn't hurt that it saves money into the bargain. If it increased facilities costs significantly, I expect there would be less enthusiasm. It's like eco initiatives at hotels. Looking green with respect to housekeeping would be less interesting if it cost them money rather than saved them. I don't really disagree with your status and optics argument though.
    • mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      I worked for a large education technology company that drastically increased its facilities costs to convert a huge office building, that the company owned already, from private offices into open-plan shared desks. Worse, this office (in Columbus, Ohio), housed almost entirely corporate HR and regional sales staff, almost no engineering presence and no plans to significant change the headcount there. Someone asked about it over the company’s quarterly web cast town hall meeting, and the CEO replied that they were transforming into an innovation company, that each and every one of us watching was an innovator and that innovators love open spaces. The staff in Columbus routinely had to handle sensitive calls about HR issues, payroll, medical leave, terminations, etc., and needed private phone call facilities almost all day every day. So the company paid money (pure loss here since they aren’t renting), to destroy privacy features that were actively needed, solely for optics.
  • marktangotango 8y ago
    Companies have been studying, measuring and carefully quantifying knowledge worker productivity for a hundred years. I laughed at this but I guess you meant it seriously?
    • mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      Yes, because it is serious and because there are many useful ways to quantify knowledge worker productivity. I can’t tell if you laughed because you’ve never looked into this field of managerial study before and have inadvertently assumed there aren’t useful, heavily relied-upon ways of measuring productivity; or if you laughed because of the dark humor that results when you realize companies are fully aware of how much lost productivity, increased communicable disease based time off, engendering of shallow / superficial face-to-face interactions, increased stress and lowered morale all cost them from open floor plans, and are sadly willing to pay those costs as a premium to get the status & optics effects they want from the look of the office layout.
  • nybblesio 8y ago
    Your last paragraph perfectly captured my thoughts on this topic. Nice to know others see things in the same light.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• ghaff 8y ago
  You don't even have to assume malicious intent. It's at least partly a variant on people tend not to undeerstand things when their job depends on not understanding them. So you have facilities and management teams that have, as one of their goals, fitting more people in a given space in high $$ real estate areas. Of course, they're going to perk up and selectively latch onto any evidence that something like an open floor plan is some breakthough way to improve collaboration, innovation, etc. And they probably believe it.
• snovv_crash 8y ago
  I thought it was more for surveillance, to make sure people look like they are busy. No goofing off when everyone can see your screen.