5 ms·

I'm surprised cubicles get so much hate. I loved mine at my first job. Oodles of desk space. Locking drawers and cabinets. There was a chair in the corner so a

I'm surprised cubicles get so much hate. I loved mine at my first job. Oodles of desk space. Locking drawers and cabinets. There was a chair in the corner so a guest could sit. Made it easy to have 2 meetings without disturbing people. less aesthetically pleasing in office photographs, but overall a much better work environment than any open plan I've experienced.

freehunter 7y ago
Cubicles got so much hate because they were worse than private offices that came before them. Now open floor plans are getting hate because they’re worse than cubicles so rose-colored glasses makes cubicles the nostalgic dream.
- treis 7y ago
  I don't think there was ever a time where every office worker had their own office. Only the big boss got their own office and everyone else had desks in a large room. The open floor plan we have now is pretty typical of what they used to look like. Here's a good example: https://www.officemuseum.com/1935_Auditor_of_Overcharge_Claims_Suspension_Relief_Claim_Bureau_CMStPPRR_OM.jpg https://www.officemuseum.com/1935_Auditor_of_Overcharge_Clai... More pictures: https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1930s_1940s.htm https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1930s_1940s.htm
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    There are plenty of places where offices were the norm some years ago. When I worked in Germany the standard was either single Offices or team offices With max 5 people. In the US IBM also had offices when I contracted there. Microsoft always talked about their offices as important. Developers sitting elbow to elbow in a room with dozens of people is a fairly recent development from what I have seen. The need for headsets to get some quiet also seems fairly new.
  - npongratz 7y ago
    That's interesting, but I'm unsure how much we can generalize from some photos. For example, I wonder how much "photogenic bias" [0] and survivorship bias exist in such photographic evidence. How many photographers of the time would take a picture of a hallway of private offices? And what editor would keep such photographs for posterity? [0] There's probably a better term for this...
    - bussierem 7y ago
      You're probably looking for "selection bias" in some sense, where the photos exist but they aren't being looked for so they aren't found.
  - majkinetor 7y ago
    THere are a bunch of places where 2 to 3 pps are in the office. I never accepted a job that didn't involve me having an office like that.
  - loco5niner 7y ago
    Office pictures from the Great Depression are not very convincing ;-)
sbarre 7y ago
I think it depends on the nature of your job. If you regularly need to interact verbally with colleagues, cubes are kind of a pain. I forget where I saw this but there was a company that had set up what were basically "team offices" so teams that worked closely together each had their own closed room where they worked, so they could collaborate in their own manner. Quiet when they needed it, loud when they needed it, and on their own schedule. That seems like a good middle.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Team offices are the best in my view. You actually can collaborate there without bothering other people.
- lainga 7y ago
  I had something vaguely similar at an internship. Each team was in a separate room for security reasons (aerospace firm), so the co. was all groups of 6-10 people in little open-plan offices. I thought that was nice and quiet.
- myu701 7y ago
  I had a setup like this. The IT Office which was its own room, then had 4 of those L cubicles in it. If you're reading this and you have this setup - don't take the bait to move to the newly remodeled building - it's a trap!
- opo 7y ago
  Having worked in one of these, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is pretty small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question or to just see what they are working on becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Unless you really know the other person well, we found people just are hesitant to do it. In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams. These team rooms ruin any informal inter-team collaboration and communication.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
The alternative isn’t open plan but an office with window and daylight. Cubicles are a little better than open plan but in the end they are still crap.
djsumdog 7y ago
I use to hate cubicles, but that was until I discovered open workspaces. For the past ten years, I've been in open workspace hell at 5 different jobs/contracts. I fucking miss the cubicle! I've been living in cities and I think that is a big factor. Real estate is expensive. But make no mistake, open workspaces are miserable places. Cubicles still suck, but they're a massive step up from open floor plans.
trhway 7y ago
>I'm surprised cubicles get so much hate. cubicles were a step down from individual offices, and was the manifestation of commoditization of the software engineering. The transition from cubicles to open offices was the part of that process going even further. Basically blue collar workers of 196x on a large factory floor. One would think that we've reached the peak of bad offices ... Well, i think some form of vertically stacked option is coming in the mid-term. In the short-term i think the next thing is the "cloud" style approach where no office desk is assigned permanently and coming into office you'd have to [find and]schedule a desk for yourself. That would allow to cut office space even more.
- lovich 7y ago
  Its called hotdesking and there are definitely some startups selling solutions to organize this
  - capdeck 7y ago
    I got to witness it first hand in a fairly large financial organization. It is first come, first served - i.e. early birds get nicer window seats and if you come late there is a chance you actually won't have a desk. If someone was eating at their desk yesterday you may get grimy, smelly keyboard and spots on the screen from them showing something on the monitor with dirty hands. After a while you get to know that this spot - letter "E" and "Backspace" doesn't work, that spot - mouse right click doesn't work, third spot - second monitor flashes every 10min... And then there is this constant "I don't belong here" feeling. Sure it is more "efficient" from the space and hardware utilization perspective. For call centers - I don't mind the setup, but good luck to you if you are planning to build software in such environment.
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    Good lord, does there have to be a startup for everything? Enter office. See empty desk. Sit at desk. Work. Done.
    - lovich 7y ago
throwaway286 7y ago
In the small sample size of my jobs, cubicles are getting much shorter. In my pre 2010 job, the walls of the cube I had were quite tall and gave reasonable privacy. In my 2016 job, they were quite short for "enhanced collaboration". I didn't really feel "safe" in my short cube, for lack of a better word.
- samstave 7y ago
  the feeling "safe" is a good way to put it, actually. If you feel "safe" in that manner, it increases your focus, and thus productivity.
samstave 7y ago
The cubes we had at Intel were fantastic - they were super tall. The cubes we had at Lockheed were great because they were super big. I've hated every "open office" layout I have ever had. I especially liked having a shared office though, sitting back-to-back in a single office, with a door - What I liked about it was that my office mate and I both liked to work with the light off, and just let the natural light from the window through (floor to ceiling window) When you have some sense of self-privacy, and ability to block people out, your productivity is higher. The reason why the "open office" concept was pushed, is all about cost. Its cheaper to give people a slot at the trough, as opposed to building them an office or cube. (Source: Former Designer and implementation builder at some of the largest open-office-concept companies you have all heard of)
vsareto 7y ago
Give me a decent size office over that any day. I don't think most tech workers have really had a proper office.

freehunter 7y ago

Cubicles got so much hate because they were worse than private offices that came before them. Now open floor plans are getting hate because they’re worse than cubicles so rose-colored glasses makes cubicles the nostalgic dream.

treis 7y ago
I don't think there was ever a time where every office worker had their own office. Only the big boss got their own office and everyone else had desks in a large room. The open floor plan we have now is pretty typical of what they used to look like. Here's a good example: https://www.officemuseum.com/1935_Auditor_of_Overcharge_Claims_Suspension_Relief_Claim_Bureau_CMStPPRR_OM.jpg https://www.officemuseum.com/1935_Auditor_of_Overcharge_Clai... More pictures: https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1930s_1940s.htm https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1930s_1940s.htm
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  There are plenty of places where offices were the norm some years ago. When I worked in Germany the standard was either single Offices or team offices With max 5 people. In the US IBM also had offices when I contracted there. Microsoft always talked about their offices as important. Developers sitting elbow to elbow in a room with dozens of people is a fairly recent development from what I have seen. The need for headsets to get some quiet also seems fairly new.
- npongratz 7y ago
  That's interesting, but I'm unsure how much we can generalize from some photos. For example, I wonder how much "photogenic bias" [0] and survivorship bias exist in such photographic evidence. How many photographers of the time would take a picture of a hallway of private offices? And what editor would keep such photographs for posterity? [0] There's probably a better term for this...
  - bussierem 7y ago
    You're probably looking for "selection bias" in some sense, where the photos exist but they aren't being looked for so they aren't found.
- majkinetor 7y ago
  THere are a bunch of places where 2 to 3 pps are in the office. I never accepted a job that didn't involve me having an office like that.
- loco5niner 7y ago
  Office pictures from the Great Depression are not very convincing ;-)

sbarre 7y ago

I think it depends on the nature of your job. If you regularly need to interact verbally with colleagues, cubes are kind of a pain. I forget where I saw this but there was a company that had set up what were basically "team offices" so teams that worked closely together each had their own closed room where they worked, so they could collaborate in their own manner. Quiet when they needed it, loud when they needed it, and on their own schedule. That seems like a good middle.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
Team offices are the best in my view. You actually can collaborate there without bothering other people.
lainga 7y ago
I had something vaguely similar at an internship. Each team was in a separate room for security reasons (aerospace firm), so the co. was all groups of 6-10 people in little open-plan offices. I thought that was nice and quiet.
myu701 7y ago
I had a setup like this. The IT Office which was its own room, then had 4 of those L cubicles in it. If you're reading this and you have this setup - don't take the bait to move to the newly remodeled building - it's a trap!
opo 7y ago
Having worked in one of these, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is pretty small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question or to just see what they are working on becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Unless you really know the other person well, we found people just are hesitant to do it. In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams. These team rooms ruin any informal inter-team collaboration and communication.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

The alternative isn’t open plan but an office with window and daylight. Cubicles are a little better than open plan but in the end they are still crap.

djsumdog 7y ago

I use to hate cubicles, but that was until I discovered open workspaces. For the past ten years, I've been in open workspace hell at 5 different jobs/contracts. I fucking miss the cubicle! I've been living in cities and I think that is a big factor. Real estate is expensive. But make no mistake, open workspaces are miserable places. Cubicles still suck, but they're a massive step up from open floor plans.

trhway 7y ago

>I'm surprised cubicles get so much hate. cubicles were a step down from individual offices, and was the manifestation of commoditization of the software engineering. The transition from cubicles to open offices was the part of that process going even further. Basically blue collar workers of 196x on a large factory floor. One would think that we've reached the peak of bad offices ... Well, i think some form of vertically stacked option is coming in the mid-term. In the short-term i think the next thing is the "cloud" style approach where no office desk is assigned permanently and coming into office you'd have to [find and]schedule a desk for yourself. That would allow to cut office space even more.

lovich 7y ago
Its called hotdesking and there are definitely some startups selling solutions to organize this
- capdeck 7y ago
  I got to witness it first hand in a fairly large financial organization. It is first come, first served - i.e. early birds get nicer window seats and if you come late there is a chance you actually won't have a desk. If someone was eating at their desk yesterday you may get grimy, smelly keyboard and spots on the screen from them showing something on the monitor with dirty hands. After a while you get to know that this spot - letter "E" and "Backspace" doesn't work, that spot - mouse right click doesn't work, third spot - second monitor flashes every 10min... And then there is this constant "I don't belong here" feeling. Sure it is more "efficient" from the space and hardware utilization perspective. For call centers - I don't mind the setup, but good luck to you if you are planning to build software in such environment.
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  Good lord, does there have to be a startup for everything? Enter office. See empty desk. Sit at desk. Work. Done.
  - lovich 7y ago

throwaway286 7y ago

In the small sample size of my jobs, cubicles are getting much shorter. In my pre 2010 job, the walls of the cube I had were quite tall and gave reasonable privacy. In my 2016 job, they were quite short for "enhanced collaboration". I didn't really feel "safe" in my short cube, for lack of a better word.

samstave 7y ago
the feeling "safe" is a good way to put it, actually. If you feel "safe" in that manner, it increases your focus, and thus productivity.

samstave 7y ago

The cubes we had at Intel were fantastic - they were super tall. The cubes we had at Lockheed were great because they were super big. I've hated every "open office" layout I have ever had. I especially liked having a shared office though, sitting back-to-back in a single office, with a door - What I liked about it was that my office mate and I both liked to work with the light off, and just let the natural light from the window through (floor to ceiling window) When you have some sense of self-privacy, and ability to block people out, your productivity is higher. The reason why the "open office" concept was pushed, is all about cost. Its cheaper to give people a slot at the trough, as opposed to building them an office or cube. (Source: Former Designer and implementation builder at some of the largest open-office-concept companies you have all heard of)

vsareto 7y ago

Give me a decent size office over that any day. I don't think most tech workers have really had a proper office.