> It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Usually the result of past "Say one thing, do another" sort of experiences. Once bitt

> It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Usually the result of past "Say one thing, do another" sort of experiences. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that. In the past decade or so, for instance, a lot of the rush to "open office" (which is Hell on Earth for the sort of deep work a lot of tech types are typically paid to do) has been surrounded with all sorts of talk about the benefits of people and ideas colliding and such... mostly coming from people who have an office with a door that closes. There's a place and time for those ideas, and it's the various "watercooler" places a typical office has - break room, lounge area, etc. "I am not working on something, let's BS on some ideas!" But there's a time and place for "not having random conversations," and it would be where people try to get work done. It's exceedingly hard to focus on deep work when there are lots of conversations around, and having gone from one extreme to another (open office with probably 100 people in line of sight to my own dedicated shed office), even if you know how bad it is, you don't realize how bad it really is. I listen to a lot less music now, and a lot of what I listen to is quieter and instrumental. In the open office plan, I'd acquired an appreciation for some pretty aggressive metal - because it was better than random conversations. And if I'm in the middle of something, I don't get constantly jacked out of the groove by other people being bored or hungry or such. There are many days out in my shed when I couldn't tell you what time it is without explicitly looking, and on more than one occasion it's been my wife pinging me, "Hey, you coming up to the house for dinner?" I'd been buried in something technical for the last few hours and had no idea it was dinnertime. But despite all this, a lot of tech companies still try to spin "butts in tiny seats with people all around them" as somehow better. Anyway, if nobody believes what management is saying, there's probably a very good reason for it.