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The cost of private offices isn't in the construction, it's in the increased square footage you need to lease because they take more space per worker than an op
by Denvercoder9 4y ago
The cost of private offices isn't in the construction, it's in the increased square footage you need to lease because they take more space per worker than an open floor plan or cubicles.
- DrBazza 4y agoAs I said in reply to another comment that suggested that you'd lose 50% or require 2x the space: A typical 'cubicle' has a wide desk and space to move you chair in and out of, plus a 'corridor' between all the cubicles. Change cubicle walls to office walls and have doors open into the existing corridor, and it's no different in size. Building codes might require some changes but I don't think it will anywhere near as much as 2x. The literature (Spolsky lists it one of his articles) implies that increased productivity of the existing employees in their own offices more than compensates for the slight decrease in the number of people you can pack into a fixed area. The difference with start-ups vs non-start-ups, is that in that first 6-12 months, it is typically a small group of people completely focused on getting the business up and running, and writing greenfield code. My point is that the environment, both the physical open plan office, and the 'coding environment' are totally different it's quite dynamic for start ups where it's just getting new code up and running and iterating quickly on ideas, vs. much more 'static' when the company has an existing product and code base.