Why Silicon Valley is Rethinking Cubicles | Hacker News Reader

Why Silicon Valley is Rethinking Cubicles

online.wsj.com

15 pointsJake_S9 comments

Sigh! Why can't more people listen to Joel, read Peopleware[1] and design offices similar to fogcreek[2]? If Joel can do it at NYC rents, I am sure others should not find it that difficult.

[1]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html -- some other great book recommendations in there

[2]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html

Yep. This article is painful to read: they propose to eliminate cubes by switching to... open plans and shared tables! Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

My home office has a Kinesis keyboard and three monitors placed at the proper height. Now they propose to "improve" my office arrangement by forcing me to use a laptop all day? I'll stick with telecommuting, thanks.

If I'm going to work at the equivalent of a table in Starbucks, why wouldn't I just work at Starbucks? There's natural light, and the coffee tastes better.

And check out this line from the article:

"Cubicles can prompt odd behavior... It is hard to see if colleagues are busy, so some cube-dwellers will send emails to a neighbor about a simple question that could have been answered more easily in a conversation."

Yes, the real problem with cubicles is that they make it too difficult to break people's concentration!

"Where people in jobs such as marketing tend to want open offices... employees in product groups favor cubes." No kidding.

Cubicles don't provide the right collaboration environment (depends on the layout) and don't provide much in terms of limiting noise or providing privacy. I'm glad that larger companies are starting to realize that cost savings are bad if they lead to lost productivity.

I think an ideal office layout should have plenty of collaboration spaces where employees can work together in small groups and quiet areas to focus individually.

People need private space (i.e. personal territory) at least some of the time, and the biggest problem with the cubicle is that there is never any real privacy.

It's telling that before he died, the guy who invented cubicles went on record to say that his vision was being terribly misused.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/09/magazines/fortune/cubicle_ho...

Oh, how happy I am NOT to be known as the inventor of the cubicle.

At least Alfred Nobel had the decency to right the misuse of his god forsaken invention.

Open spaces are great for ad hock conversation, but it is annoying having your computer's monitor exposed to anyone behind you. Things like writing emails or checking bank accounts are especially uncomfortable.

Intel cube farms are horrendous. The only motivation for employees to stick around is the high salary they pay, but even then I'm sure most spend theirs on Paxil and Prozac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPmD2h7mG-I

It's pretty sad that thousands, maybe millions, of people may be wasting away in cubicles partially due to silly regulations regarding depreciation schedules for cubicles vs. permanent walls.

It's also telling that Microsoft seems almost alone in bucking the trend amongst large computer industry companies. If their competitors had spent their money in ways that enabled their engineers to be productive, instead of on lawyers, lobbyists and pr firms blaming MS for 'monopolistic' practices, maybe they could on occasion produce something people would pay for, too.

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