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Our Open-Plan Office Failed, So We’re Moving to a Towering Panopticon (2017)
- ldoughty 7y agoWhat a terrible website, can't even get a summary, or a sentence, without subscribing?
- smhenderson 7y agoReally? It worked fine for me and I'd never heard of it before tonight. I'm running NoScript, that might be the difference? Best line in the article IMHO This sounds terrifying and dystopian. Is it? No.
- thomasedwards 7y agoWeird, I’ve always found McSweeney’s one of the better – I just opened in Chrome and Firefox, both normal and Incognito, can see the article all ways.
- ncmncm 7y agoMcSweeney's never fails to deliver.
- quxbar 7y agoThis is so spot on it hurts. Get out while you can! I switched from tech startups to consulting and have never been happier.
- philipov 7y agoI also do consulting, but the clients whose offices I visit still have open plan offices :p
- flukus 7y agoYeah, if you think it's bad in tech you should see what it's like in companies with less highly paid, less valued employees, especially in jobs that actually do benefit from constant collaboration.
- solotronics 7y agoIn one of our colo buildings there is a call center for some online pet company. They not only have an open office plan they have fully transparent glass walls all the way around the outside of their office space! You can watch everyone at once even from outside. It's weird. Even more authoritarian is the multiple armed guards and the obvious undisguised metal detector at the front door. I think the management there is dreaming of a similar level of control as a North Korean party leader.
- mattkrause 7y agoI work in a research institute that is moving towards bigger and bigger open offices. It’s maddening. It does make it fairly clear how much the higher-ups value “innovation” versus the actual work of discovering stuff.
- mlthoughts2018 7y agoThe best parts for me are the non-answers about Nest and Cell. And also referring to corporate surveillance as “compassionately evaluating your flow state.” Somebody read the dexterity with symbols chapter of Moral Mazes :)
- 40four 7y agoWas not familiar with McSweeney's before. This is hilarious! I will have to check out more
- smrq 7y agoOh good, you're just in time for decorative gourd season!
- kmonsen 7y agoTry this one: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/choose-your-own-corporate-adventure https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/choose-your-own-corporat...
- prawn 7y agoThis might be a good starting point: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-50-most-read-mcsweeneys-internet-tendency-articles-of-all-time https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-50-most-read-mcsween... This is one of the all-time classics though: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its-decorative-gourd-season-motherfuckers https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its-decorative-gourd-sea...
- cafard 7y agoFond of https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/alternatives-to-resting-bitch-face https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/alternatives-to-resting-...
- throwawayjava 7y agoYou know what? Sound-proof prison cells sound great.
- newsbinator 7y ago> Will I be able to see you in Nest, watching me work? > No. Nest will be coated in one-way mirrored glass. And we are not “watching you,” we are compassionately evaluating your flow state.
- King-Aaron 7y ago> This sounds terrifying and dystopian. Is it? > No. That's me sold then!
- jsjsbsgh 7y agoI'd take it over an opem office if it's sound/germ proof and has free food.
- keanebean86 7y agoI was thinking we could do rows of Stadium seats like this: |\\\| You can use the back of the person below you as a desk. Managment woild have the last row since it has extra room.
- hyfgfh 7y ago> What will we wear then? > Cool jumpsuits! Each suit has a unique configuration of colored bubbles serving as your team member identifier. In Japan people use salaryman uniform, available in the color blue and white!
- jackyinger 7y agoThis is pretty great. I gotta admit the horribly undirected layout of my work’s cafeteria leads me to fantasize about authoritarian architecture. Someone should write something that more obviously lampoons the digital surveillance of employees that is commonplace within corporations.
- jedberg 7y ago> What else will be in Synergon besides our workspace? > There will be a Jamba Juice. This was so ridiculously on point.
- carrolldunham 7y agoA good satire of dystopian, anti-human 'design' ideology but... the sidebar promoting something that features HumansOfFlat design (visual newspeak)... is part of the satire right? 'iLLUSTORiA' is reading material in the Cells?
- methou 7y agoI feel strangely satisfying to see articles like these. Soon after I feel comfortable at my new work, it constantly agonizes me working in an open-plan office. It took me a while to overcome the feeling that I'm always broadcasting my screen to the entire company. And the colleagues who want "a second of your time" would no longer send emails, they come directly at you! Worst of all, when people were simply passing by, but you feel that they are coming for you. At last, I find out that our new office is still an open floor, I should just quit already
- generatorguy 7y agoI am currently one of two people working out of a 2000 sq ft office unit with 5 or 7 offices, boardroom bathroom, kitchen. It’s for sale so probably going to get the boot in 6 months but until then it is ideal.
- ubu7737 7y agoI have a coworker two half-height cube walls away who will stare pointedly at me seconds before he calls out my name to molest my concentration. I have come to find these events blood-curdling. It is simply unacceptable to me that a turned head cuts through my peripheral vision to warn me of what amounts to an assault on the mind. The open office enshrines interruption and creates an environment whereby no moment of reflection is sacred. The neediest, most disruptive, and least productive employees are rewarded for behaving in the most antisocial ways thinkable.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cromulent 7y agoFor context: "The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
- enjoyyourlife 7y agoPicture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidio_Modelo#/media/File:Presidio-modelo2.JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidio_Modelo#/media/File:Pr...
- kaycebasques 7y agoSee also Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault. Foucault uses the Panopticon as a metaphor for how those in power maintain control in modern society. Philosophize This has a really good intro on the topic. Transcript: http://philosophizethis.org/episode-121-transcript/ http://philosophizethis.org/episode-121-transcript/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1tcYLy2ILoRoDddvR56Kxy?si=qbg6cjbxR1a7V5UlSVLDIQ https://open.spotify.com/episode/1tcYLy2ILoRoDddvR56Kxy?si=q...
- ohduran 7y agoThanks for this! I've been in the lookout for good philosophy podcasts, to no avail...yet. Definitely giving this one a try
- xtracto 7y agoThis got me to think... even inmates have better privacy than it workers in their day life. Why can a prison have "cubicles" for 1 or 2 people but an engineer earning 150k a year can't?
- baud147258 7y agoBecause inmates live and sleep there, whereas engineer (usually) go home at 5 pm? And the engineer can also just hand his resignation, doing the same thing in prison is slightly more complicated.