4 ms·

> lamenting the death of cubicles. I’m too young to have worked in cublicles but man, each time I see pictures of them, I don’t get why they were so unpopular.

by pjerem 3y ago

> lamenting the death of cubicles. I’m too young to have worked in cublicles but man, each time I see pictures of them, I don’t get why they were so unpopular. I’ve never had so much room for my stuff and so much privacy during my career in open-spaces (except of course WFH). I’m amazed at how nobody understands that open-spaces are awful to do a job that requires focusing.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ghaff 3y ago
I think the reaction is in comparison to having a private office. Though truth be told, everywhere I've worked with offices, the norm has always been open door policy unless you were on the phone or otherwise needed some privacy or maybe heads down time. It was never typical for people to go the day with their door shut and would have been remarked on.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  From 1997-2001 I worked in a glorious place where everyone had an office with a door and a window. Indeed, the doors were mostly open, but they opened onto corridors, meaning it was [by overwhelming] default quiet in the offices.
  - mvanbaak 3y ago
    I have the same experience. Where I worked the offices were 2-person offices, and this worked very good for mentor-student environment, or when 2 ppl had to crack a really tough nut. The doors were also mostly open, and the corridors were quiet and peaceful. If you wanted to chitchat etc you would walk to the social area with a coffee machine, the lunch setup etc. It was really nice, and if I ever have to go back to an office, this is how I would like it to be again. Otherwise I continue my working from home.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I worked for a very small company for almost 10 years. For about half that time I had a spacious office that overlooked a river. From a scenery perspective even better than my home office which is nicely appointed but doesn't have much of a view although it's in the country.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
I think at the time they were mostly perceived as a downgrade from individual or duo offices that office workers may have expected at the time. Coming from the bullpen offices we have now cubicles are great, coming from having a room with a door you can close and window to outside they are strictly worse. A lot of this is obviously perceived prestige too, but degrees of (mostly unstated) prestige have always been part of the compensation packages of white collar professionals.
- ghaff 3y ago
  As someone who worked in old fashioned cubicles for over 10 years, I think the prestige was definitely part of it. Outside of executive suite, as I recall it, very few offices had windows. In fact, more cubicles probably had some natural light than most offices did.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
orev 3y ago
> nobody understands that open-spaces are awful to do a job that requires focusing. The people making the decisions don’t have jobs that require this level of focus, and can’t even imagine what a job like that is like (or at worst, they just want the geeks to stop complaining and deal with it, because if you really were that smart you’d be the boss making the decisions).
- mvanbaak 3y ago
  > The people making the decisions don’t have jobs that require this level of focus Most of the time they either have their own office, or work from home. Thus not feeling the pain of the open floorplan setup.
  - orev 3y ago
    You’re missing the point. It’s that the type of work they do does not require hours of deep focus. They’re doing things like having calls, sending emails, and making PowerPoints. All of that are things that happen in short bursts and aren’t affected by lack of prolonged focus. If there’s one thing people on HN need to realize about this topic, it’s that not everyone has the same type of job and therefore the impact of RTO is very different depending on the job.
jimbob45 3y ago
The great irony is that open-space offices (or cubicle'd spaces) were to preserve flexibility in case one wanted to use the space for something other than offices in the future. Now that we actually need that flexibility to convert those offices into residential space, we're told it's impossible so none of the flexibility ever mattered anyway.

by pjerem 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ghaff 3y ago

I think the reaction is in comparison to having a private office. Though truth be told, everywhere I've worked with offices, the norm has always been open door policy unless you were on the phone or otherwise needed some privacy or maybe heads down time. It was never typical for people to go the day with their door shut and would have been remarked on.

sokoloff 3y ago
From 1997-2001 I worked in a glorious place where everyone had an office with a door and a window. Indeed, the doors were mostly open, but they opened onto corridors, meaning it was [by overwhelming] default quiet in the offices.
- mvanbaak 3y ago
  I have the same experience. Where I worked the offices were 2-person offices, and this worked very good for mentor-student environment, or when 2 ppl had to crack a really tough nut. The doors were also mostly open, and the corridors were quiet and peaceful. If you wanted to chitchat etc you would walk to the social area with a coffee machine, the lunch setup etc. It was really nice, and if I ever have to go back to an office, this is how I would like it to be again. Otherwise I continue my working from home.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I worked for a very small company for almost 10 years. For about half that time I had a spacious office that overlooked a river. From a scenery perspective even better than my home office which is nicely appointed but doesn't have much of a view although it's in the country.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

I think at the time they were mostly perceived as a downgrade from individual or duo offices that office workers may have expected at the time. Coming from the bullpen offices we have now cubicles are great, coming from having a room with a door you can close and window to outside they are strictly worse. A lot of this is obviously perceived prestige too, but degrees of (mostly unstated) prestige have always been part of the compensation packages of white collar professionals.

ghaff 3y ago
As someone who worked in old fashioned cubicles for over 10 years, I think the prestige was definitely part of it. Outside of executive suite, as I recall it, very few offices had windows. In fact, more cubicles probably had some natural light than most offices did.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

orev 3y ago

> nobody understands that open-spaces are awful to do a job that requires focusing. The people making the decisions don’t have jobs that require this level of focus, and can’t even imagine what a job like that is like (or at worst, they just want the geeks to stop complaining and deal with it, because if you really were that smart you’d be the boss making the decisions).

mvanbaak 3y ago
> The people making the decisions don’t have jobs that require this level of focus Most of the time they either have their own office, or work from home. Thus not feeling the pain of the open floorplan setup.
- orev 3y ago
  You’re missing the point. It’s that the type of work they do does not require hours of deep focus. They’re doing things like having calls, sending emails, and making PowerPoints. All of that are things that happen in short bursts and aren’t affected by lack of prolonged focus. If there’s one thing people on HN need to realize about this topic, it’s that not everyone has the same type of job and therefore the impact of RTO is very different depending on the job.

jimbob45 3y ago

The great irony is that open-space offices (or cubicle'd spaces) were to preserve flexibility in case one wanted to use the space for something other than offices in the future. Now that we actually need that flexibility to convert those offices into residential space, we're told it's impossible so none of the flexibility ever mattered anyway.