Lars Tunbjörk documented the rise of alienating office work
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
With cubes, most of the engineers didn't need headphones nor medication to focus, unlike open-plan. And there was a lot of stopping in others' cube doorways for quick meetings, and temporarily wheeling chairs into the hall.
The cube partitions were finished in a coarse weave of gray cloth, and there were copious T-shaped pins, which people weren't shy about using to hang project artifacts, decorations, and amusements on the insides and outsides of their cubes.
No motivational posters, and I don't recall any soul-sucking corporate art.
A clearing had some small round tables that people sometimes used for meetings. And for "Friday at 4" socializing, the tables were pushed out of the way, and someone brought in big galvanized tubs of ice and beverages.
WFH (with occasional in-person) is best overall, but cube farms can be better than they're made out to be.
It was loud and distracting... one of the only jobs I ever quit without another job to go because I hated it so much.
I've leased a small office in a coworking space to alleviate the workfromhomeitis.
Its nice enough but wow... the people having to work at tables in an open room, mini fake living room, and open kitchen.
It's social but totally unsuitable for concentration.
The book here actually encited a bit of nostalgia in me and I bought a copy.
I can actually show people what life was like for us since I don't really have my own pictures of office life of the era.
Every office worker should have the ability to close a door to preserve their privacy and productivity, even if it's on a space no larger than the cube would be.
(It is not at all improbable that my vehemence in this matter is related to my mild-to-moderate ADHD, which made my stint in a 6' cube farm extremely frustrating due to the constant distractions.)
The silly part of all this is the people arguing for open plan offices in the present/recent past as a “superior” and more humanizing and collaborative environment when cubicles were literally invented as a more humane option.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/a-brief-history-of-how-the-c...
Playtime works wonderfully as a cinematic satire of contemporary society and our roles.
The film's office scenes are particularly striking because they visualize the dehumanizing aspects of modern office design that cubicle farms would later become notorious for - the uniformity, the loss of privacy despite physical separation, and the way architecture can make people behave more like components in a machine than individuals.
The thing about Playtime is the constant onslaught of appropriate explorations on the theme of an increasingly technical life.
By the time the end of Playtime rolls by, what you get is an examination of what it is like to be human and hopefully you feel a sense of joy in being a part of the human race.
Uh, as if Office Space doesn’t have the iconic “PC LOAD LETTER? What the… does that mean?”
What a programmer would more likely be complaining about with a corporate workgroup page printer is someone spooling a huge job that DoSes it, piles of other people's printouts that they never picked up, toner out (and it's not in a sealed cartridge, so you're risking staining your clothes and hands as well as the carpet), paper jams (including paper that must be ripped out, and job reconstructed, after backlog of others' jobs), failing pickup rollers, some software they have to use that sometimes overloads the renderer RAM, the smell of ozone from heavy printing with no openable windows, etc.
That would likely mean that they will give out the poster's email/IP given just a credible threat of a lawsuit.
So maybe don't post these if you live in a country where copyright is actively enforced.
Newspapers/magazines generally don't go after copyright infringements on an article level, I think, but who knows what might happen in the current economic downturn.
I think it's (likely) unethical of YC to routinely and obviously allow these links, for the reasons outlined above. Not because I care for the publishers, but because of the potential harm YC exposes its users to by normalizing this.
So... no thanks! Would rather work in comfort, silence, and near my dog.
I work in exchange for currency I can then trade for goods and services. Employment serves no other purpose.
I don't work to make friends. I have a variety of other options for socializing.