Bring Back Private Offices, Part II | Hacker News Reader

Bring Back Private Offices, Part II

albertcory50.substack.com

27 pointsAlbertCory17 comments

If you want high performance people who do work that requires a lack of interruptions, open office ass-in-seat mentality with lots of pointless meetings is the worst. Open offices promote interruptions and make them socially "acceptable". "Collaboration" is an urban legend. Work gets done when people aren't bothered.

Give workers doors and headphones.

Private offices are nice. But real estate costs a lot of money. The company I work at would need 4x or more square footage in both San Francisco and New York to give people shoebox offices. In SF, we’d need to find like 3 more empty office buildings near our current one, and I know there are no such buildings available. Until someone can make personal offices as dense as open offices, it’s going to be a very hard sell to Management.

As long as we’re pining after real estate, I’d love (to have the money for) a 2400sqft apartment instead of a 430sqft one, that would probably improve my life more than a private office. Also, why can’t I buy a starter home for $60,000 these days?

>Until someone can make personal offices as dense as open offices,

They had decades ago: they're called "cubicles". The open office I sit in now is no more dense than the compact cubicle I had to sit in about 20 years ago. It was a lot quieter too.

Cubicles are not as dense as the open office plan we use. Our desks are about 1.8 office chairs wide, never seen a cubicle that small.

That just sounds like hell.

The densest cubicles I used (just before the open office fad took over) were, IIRC, 6 by 9 feet. The company previous had 9x9 cubicles but shrunk them to pack more people in. The 9x9 cubicles were actually quite nice as long as you didn't have a building column in the middle of yours.

Depth of desk is a consideration too

Your cost figures are highly questionable and probably exaggerated. In the first article I quoted a couple people who would deny them.

Private office systems (all but universal before the advent of cubes everywhere) had open office-style areas in the middle of the floor, with offices around the perimeter. Please redo your calculations in light of that.

I mean to give an office to everyone, not just to some amount of people who fit on the perimeter

that's your choice. "Equality" does not exist in a corporation.

Even if we need just 2x the buildings, it still seems impossible to sell to management. Where are going to get a whole second building? Now people are going to need to commute for cross-team meetings. If they don’t have an office if their own to Zoom from - we’d probably need to convert all the meeting rooms to offices to squeeze into 2x buildings if we want to give 1/4 people offices. Floor / open area perimeter space is currently all meeting rooms.

You keep making up numbers and changing your argument. Other people have studied this in detail, whereas you have some back-of-the-napkin thoughts.

Private offices can earn much more too with every hour of the work day

The average square footage per person has also gone down with the latest boma guidelines

And not to mention booking an office at work to hybrid work would probably get used more than a hotdesk.

But with RTO people aren’t physically in the same place at the same time so if we have Monday, Tuesday people and Wednesday Thursday people they can coexist in the same office so we only need half as much space or to hold the same amount of people you get the side of the office to store, knickknacks, and and get the other half of this office to put all your bullshit. There’s awkward logistical problems to be dealt with but hey, I’d get a private office.

One imagines a mechanized office with movable rooms that squish when not in use. Too many sci-fi movies ;)

Individual Private offices are superior in almost every way for makers.

Additionally, open concept war rooms for a small startup team can be useful to maintain for everyone to sit together in escalated times.

In addition to this, remote can work better as hybrid with the above two satisfied.

Some employers seem to require remote employees to have a dedicated office. Seems understandable as there can be different distractions at home to go with the benefits.

The form factor that everyone seems to be overlooking for private offices is that of the After Burner Deluxe arcade cabinet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVMmFD9mzCI

Give me a dim space with a big monitor and a seat that can recline while keeping my screen in view. Privacy and focus without taking up much space.

It's funny (as in tragic) how "caves and common" team room got consultantized into "no walls for you".

Ted Gioia (on Substack) bemoaned the AI clones of his writing. Some scumbags will scrape all the facts and repackage them, taking his name off the product.

This inspired me to search "Bring Back Private Offices." There were several republishings, but they all had links to the real thing. I guess I'm not important enough to rip off.

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