The thing that a lot of these articles miss—probably because it doesn’t matter at all to bean-counters—is personalization. The idea of spending all day tapping

The thing that a lot of these articles miss—probably because it doesn’t matter at all to bean-counters—is personalization. The idea of spending all day tapping away at a laptop keyboard makes my wrists ache thinking about it, and the idea of being limited to a laptop display is pretty bad too. A real desk with a real keyboard (and no keyboard is one-size-fits-all!) and a real display is key to productivity, and wholly missing from all of these “just work from a couch/phone booth/privacy pod/hot desk” designs. People need individuality in their workspace equipment, to say nothing of the ability to personalize their environment to make it human with things like pictures and plants. The inability to claim any part of the work environment as uniquely yours is dehumanizing, and only serves to make people less attached. If companies want people to be attached to their employers (whether or not they actually should be), they might try harder to make the workplace less generic and depersonal.