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Comment by programminggeek | Hacker News Reader

There is another possibility, that all offices are fundamentally flawed creations designed not to foster work so much as to create a dynamic of control.

When you pay someone and you control both their place and time for over 1/3 of their daily life, there are inherent problems. I'm not sure that any office plan is ever going to be super ideal because of the fundamental problems of power and control that come with an employer/employee relationship.

Open plans are designed to look cool and help recruiting. They also create a sense of "busyness" that owners and managers love. Busyness is proof they are still in charge.

Arguing about wether or not it is better for productivity is a red herring. It was never about productivity in the first place. Most of what happens in an office is only tangentially related to the idea of work efficiency.

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Absolutely. People, and especially a very large fraction of people in the software industry, are loathe to think that anything other than ability and pure reason factor into, well, anything.

Maybe I've just had some poor experiences but I find it is safe to assume that the majority of decisions around office configuration, benefits, salary, etc., are made based on power dynamics, ego, and bean counting (which is itself a means of exerting control) rather than any other reason, especially rather than after considered thought given to employees' needs and desires.

"People, and especially a very large fraction of people in the software industry, are loathe to think that anything other than ability and pure reason factor into, well, anything."

I would phrase it slightly differently.

We understand full well the world in general doesn't work this way. But we want to carve out a small part of the world where things do work this way, as much as possible.

I think Fog Creek (now Stack Exchange) is trying to embody this ideal in how they have structured their offices. Joel was a developer, and designed his office space in a way that he believes will lead to the greatest possible productivity for his developers.

So the biggest criticism is aimed towards places like Facebook, Google, and other software firms who pay lip service to geek ideals, but prove in how they lay out their office spaces what they really care about.

Businesses exist to make money, not just to give people in power a place to harumph about. More productivity IS important, because without that, businesses are losing out on potential income, and that's not what businesses like to do.

You'd be surprised how much ego can factor into decisions that are about "making more money" or "making the business more productive". Things like saving face, not wanting to look stupid, or wanting to look cool to impress friends is a huge part of business.

However, there are huge agency problems between the stated goals of a business (mainly, to make money for its shareholders), and the CEOs interests - where ego, power, and making money for himself might be more important than long-term decisions involving productivity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Apparently most relocations are closer to the CEOs home, for example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8604202

New buildings are also monuments to the CEO (or President, or whatever authority builds it).

> Businesses exist to make money

That's the perspective of the owner at the very top.

> just to give people in power a place to harumph about

That's the perspective of the management crowd.

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