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Comment by ascotan | Hacker News Reader

it's a millennial thing. they grew up working on laptops and their dream office is to make the workplace look like starbucks. Open seating, no cubicles, a barista. It's a knee-jerk reaction to the old office place standard of 'cubes'. Managers hire out to consultants that hype this type of office layout because it will supposedly attract a talent.

To be fair, cubes weren't any better. I remember having a guy slerping tea sitting across from me. I couldn't see him but I could sure hear him and there was no way for me to get up and move.

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Rigghht... It's the millenials, not like corpos haven't been doing this for decades. As soon as there were cubicles, there were people rejecting them.

See SC Johnson HQ for one of the most famous versions of this. (https://youtu.be/yb-kYt1lpnI)

For sure, and like he says near the beginning of that video, "Most employees have moved to other buildings." I've been in some of those other buildings and guess what, they're almost entirely private offices... no open office plan.

They learned their lesson from the Frank Lloyd Wright building. It's a wonderful piece of architectural history, but it's not wonderful for productivity.

He doesn't mention one of the most interesting things about that building -- the building has no square corners, everything is round (even the elevator).

Speaking as a millennial: open offices were there when we got there! If we did anything it was to keep hybrid/WFH arrangements where we could.

I don't know. I'm certainly not a millennial and I've never had any real issue with ambient coffee shop or equivalent background when reading/working/etc. and I'm rarely putting earphones/headphones on or playing music in general. People probably just have different tolerances and types of tolerances for distraction--not sure how generational it is.

As I've said before, people here pine for private offices a lot but, in my experience, typical workplace private offices have tended to be door open by default absent private meetings/phone calls/some urgent deadline thing.

Even with the door open, it still blocks a lot of ambient sound. Sound also isn’t the only problem with open offices. The other problem is with visual distractions. It’s hard not to interrupt your work whenever the constant stream of people pass by, especially when they greet you

The open office trend happened before millennials started having careers, open offices are always an economic choice. It's cheaper to cram more people into less space.

Hmm, I think it’s more a managerial thing than a millennial thing. I don’t know a single millennial that wants to sit in open floorplan offices. Just because something happened when our generation entered the workforce doesn’t mean we were the driving force for it. Maybe millennials also caused climate change, as far as I know that started becoming a recognized problem around the time we were born. Expensive housing is on us too.

I would definitely prefer good cubicles over open assigned desks. (I mean, with open desks or cubicles, I would ask the other person to stop slurping loudly.)

But "good" is the key there. I worked at an office in 2001 which had a cubicle system that was probably only a year or two old. The desks were wood (probably veneer) with nice big keyboard shelves, as was the style at the time. The panels were either grey metal or red fabric, and they stepped up and down so that beside your close coworker there might be only a 4' wall, and then a 6' wall to the "hallway".

Immediately after that, through an acquisition, we were in an office whose cubicles were probably from the 80s, and they were all 6' well-worn beige fabric panels, which despite being private and relatively quiet were just so ugly and energy-draining.

It’s more a new way to cut costs further. Plenty of boomer leadership hopped on the open office trend despite plummeting employee productivity and satisfaction

It has absolutely nothing to do with millennials.

> To be fair, cubes weren't any better.

Cubes, with hot-desking, is pretty great actually. IBM has it in their drop-in “business centers” for WFH employees.

I unironically miss my cube. They were natural sound breaks and sound absorbing so you could talk and not intrude horrifically on people adjacent. I had a place for my things so I didn't have to shuttle them in and out every day. I had a phone that worked, an Ethernet jack that was not temperamental, and a whiteboard that was ready to go. I also had a few different ways I could sit at my cube so I wouldn't get the same pains I get sitting in an open office plan because there is no way to customize anything for comfort in many cases. I have seriously considered packing a drill and a set of bits to tear off idiot things like keyboard trays (when nobody has an external keyboard) but I am resisting only just.

In a moment of clarity the real thing about open office plans is that most times when you show up it has the vibe of a floor being fired and everyone's desk wiped clean. There are no remnants of those who are there, no photos of family or the odd dollar store fun thing that kicks around a desk, every desk is wiped clean more austere than a hospital room.

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