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Comment by rhizome | Hacker News Reader

I haven't ever known a manager that wanted an open office to control or oppress their staff.

The way it works is similar to attitudes toward remote work (until a few months ago): barriers help people waste time and get away with stuff.

Control is not all about what an authority can do (which is actually the least efficient form of control), it's also about what other people are prevented from doing, sometimes structurally so, as in the context of office layout and design.

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There's a simple solution. Just give up on the idea that we can expect people to work many hours ~continuously, on a regular basis.

Sure, there must be times when ~everyone is available to talk. But otherwise, just let people work when they're ready to work. And let them self report their work time.

if you are flipping burgers, sure, you are expected to work continiously every hour. but for salaried people - it doesnt make sense, sometimes you just need to sit on a problem for some time to solve it, or just sit and think about it. Salaried people arent paid by the hour, so why control them? this I dont understand

I consider thinking to be "work".

You say that salaried people aren't paid by the hour, but that's arguably a fiction. There's always a defined work day. Some employees end up "working" for inordinate amounts of time. And some employers do push employees to be more productive.

So if the standard is 40 hours per week, I'm just saying that you do the work whenever, not eight continuous hours per day, for five days per week. That decreases control of employees by employers.

Just give up on the idea that we can expect people to work many hours ~continuously, on a regular basis

This conflicts with the much, much stronger profit motive.

How is that?

The easiest business metric for measurement is profit per worker hour. What do you mean, "How is that?"

It's also relatively useless as a measurement, so you'd expect the profit motive to drive people away from it.

> It's also relatively useless as a measurement

It is not. It's specifically used because of the utility in the simplest tasks. Factories are designed around throughput and efficiency of workers.

Fair enough. I was mostly talking about professional staff, such as engineers, and some trades. Most traditionally, for example, lawyers and plumbers.

What would you do with it in an office, though? It's well known that you can't just throw man-hours at cognitive tasks and expect linear or even monotonic returns.

I asked "How is that?" because relying on worker-reported hours is no less consistent with the profit motive than are current standards for salaried employees.

Employers can still calculate "profit per worker hour". And it's arguably more accurate when based on reported work time, rather than just days worked.

you hit the nail on the head. The main issue here is also that MOST employers/managers don't really know how to measure your productivity, especially in modern software engineering.

That's why "Busyness" and "Butts in Seat Per Hour" are seen as proxy for productivity. That's also why politics play such a big role.

Until we find a GOOD way to measure productivity, Control and "Busyness" (the illusion of productivity) is unfortunately not going to go away.

"Busyness"

I thought to myself: "what if that was the etymology of the word, how ironic".

https://www.google.com/search?q=etymology+business

Oh wow.

I've always kinda "known" that, in a joking way. And never bothered to actually check. So thanks :)

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