Companies Move Away From Cubicle Culture 509
Makarand writes "According to this Mercury News article companies are
freeing employees from
their cubicles to save on corporate real estate costs. By eliminating the
need for offices for thousands of employees they are reducing their building
needs by thousands of square feet.
Employees now work in shared areas or from home or elsewhere outside the traditional cubicle.
Those who prove to be unproductive when they have to share space with others risk getting fired. This trend is expected
to accelerate
as wireless technologies are making workers more mobile and capable of working from anywhere.
About 13000 of Sun Microsystems' 35000 employees working in Santa Clara (CA) currently lack offices."
So they fire people (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Good Thing (tm) (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, there's the risk of workers losing productivity, but I think we have to face it: we're there to work, not for fun talks.
I see. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the only way to afford housing in CA... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So they fire people (Score:4, Insightful)
No they fired people for being unproductive. From the article, "But some proved unproductive and were fired."
unproductive != antisocial
Did I miss something?
I read the article, but didn't see what you were referring to.
Re:Well that sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The telecommuting issue is a bit different, and I am looking for a situation exactly like that. I would kill to work at home instead of sitting in traffic all day. If you have the dedication to be productive from your home (and if you don't, you'll be sh*tcanned), then save yourself the hassle of sitting in traffic. Bonus: work without pants! Seriously folks, driving back and forth to the office everyday is going to be a thing of the past, and thank God for it.
They SHOULD fire them (Score:1, Insightful)
Then I certainly wouldn't want to spend any of -my- time with them, let alone share the workplace with them.
I don't care how productive or geekily intelligent someone is. If they can't communicate effectively or deal with other people, they have no place in most workforces.
A team of 5 interesting, friendly people will ALWAYS outperform a lone social outcast barricaded in his single office.
i had the same problem... (Score:2, Insightful)
Peace and Quiet (Score:5, Insightful)
The noise and interruptions are hurrendous. I am working from home two days a week now because it's impossible to get things done at work.
The general noise level from the other areas is unacceptable. I know we are also guilty of making a racket, I'm not saying we're perfect.
But when I'm in the guts of the server side, and we have a very complicated core server component, I don't want to be interrupted every five minutes by laughter, walk-ups, casual questions from co-workers. Team player bullshit or not, I'm there to engineer a fast, reliable, robust component. When I'm interrupted a lot, my defect rate (number of tickets at 'Defect' level entered against me per release symbol) goes up. Really up. A lot of people wear headphones to block out noise, but there's evidence to suggest that if the brain's cultural centers are engaged, engineers don't make creative leaps. I think this is true.
Plus, as you may know, creative work is usually performed in the psychological state of 'flow', which is intensely focussed concentration. It takes 20 minutes of hard concentration to get into 'flow' and then you can be snapped back out of it instantly by a question or a ringing phone.
I would LOVE to have an office. I would even share it with two other engineers, provided I could pick them.
Hell, I would love to have a cubicle, actually.
The ergonomics of offices and the human aspects are well discussed in Peopleware [amazon.co.uk], but if you don't think you can make change in your organisation, don't read it because you'll be left depressed at how offices are *supposed* to be run.
Re:antisocial (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us like to be able to concentrate in order to get work done, and find it difficult to switch off from everyone around us. It's just too easy to get distracted by all the conversations around you, joining in when you feel like it.
Seems to me that anti-social people might have fewer problems being distracted.
It's just the latest management fashion. Instead of senior managers using intelligence and common sense to work out for themselves what is a good, productive environment, they just follow the latest fashion that everyone else is talking about.
Give them another five years, and the fashion will be back to individual work areas, with some separation from others, so people can be "more productive".
This is "freeing workers" ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm incredibly lucky to work at a company where I -- not as a manager, but as a regular ol' code monkey -- have my own office. Cubicles suck. Open space environments suck even worse. I know; I've done both in the past, and never will again if I can help it. The "old paradigm" of the office became the standard for corporate work because, guess what, it works. Just about every change since then has served to increase worker stress and decrease productivity.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, bad - it may violate federal laws (Score:5, Insightful)
If an factory worker were required to work on a slippery floor, he could legitimately complain that the environment limited his productivity, not his own inherent disability.
And as for paraplegics, If Cambridge (or is it Oxford?) didn't supply wheelchair ramps, would it make sense to fire Stephen Hawking? In fact, how about people that can't work in the rain? Should the building have a roof just to accommodate them?
Re:not fond of homw work any more (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate it!
I do have a dedicated "office" room, but the space isn't the issue... it's that there are no people around. Or if there are, they are here to socialize.
I think it's a Good Thing on some very deep level to be around other people while working, at least some of the time. Programming for twelve hours straight without seeing another human being tweaketh the mind in harmful ways.
Since I work for myself, there's not much I can do about it right now. However, as soon as Profit allows, I will rent an office somewhere and arrange for others to share it, even if they aren't working for me.
Oh yeah, and I need a cute secretary...
Re:Well that sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't work in the office .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything that does not have to be done onsite in the office can be outsourced to India and China and elsewhere.
so eventually it all could go over there, leaving a twisted dried up hulk of an economy behind in the USA. When you take 500,000 high paying jobs and ship them overseas, you may have saved the companies big bucks. but you have also reduced the market for your high price goods by that much.
Do this enough times, and you get a situation like you saw in manufacturing in Detroit. When was the last time you heard stories of the incredible economic opportunities in Detroit (even if things have improved somewhat after 30 - 40 years).
Manufacturing says they are doing this to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Efficient systems are not always robust, because you tend to eliminate redundancies. Redundancies give you your backup capabilities. Efficient systems tend to be more vulnerable.
And so it is with businesses.
But in the meantime, instead of building and maintaining their prize market, they drain it like parasites...
Everyone will ignore what is really happening (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, having hotel offices for the person who comes in everyday, works 9-ot-5, ... is dumb. And I doubt many companies would do that.
Re:Well that sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
I can think of another. Who is going to move my technical books each day? Due to limited shelf space in my current cubicle, I only have a limited supply as it is. One shelf full, and an overflow stack on my desk. And even now, I often regret not having a certain book on hand when needed.
Going off-topic a bit, the solution is, of course, online books. I am tired of lugging 3 or 4 hefty books home every weekend! I've actually considering purchasing another copy of some of my most referenced books just to reduce this problem. Public transport just wasn't designed for carting books about, as I have discovered
It says something about the people proposing this scheme
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:5, Insightful)
How about four lone social outcasts barricaded in offices independently working on different pieces of a project, be it top-down or object-oriented design or what-have-you, that are neatly integrated by a manager/project coordinator? There's plenty of effective ways to manage a team that don't necessarily require socialization.
Re:No, bad - it may violate federal laws (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, with the cube thing, not everyone can work in a cube. Also, management and HR needs to learn how to handle the nuts who can't stand smelling a little gas cuz you ate a burrito for lunch. My dad taught me to suck up and work even if I did not like the person I was working for/with. You are there to work. Not to talk or smell your neighbor. I don't mean you can't have a little fun while working, but when things bother you when you are working, you need to let it slide and do the work.
Re:Oh great (Score:1, Insightful)
In each of the instances the people who were on the same team didn't have an issue not having walls between them and their teammates.. the issue was always with someone who wasn't on their team, being a busybody and watching them like a hawk and complaining they were too loud, didn't like that they ate lunch at their desk, or other things. This resulted in harassment suits being filed with HR eventually, and led to decreased productivity and a hostile work environment. Chiat Day tried this years ago, they did it to everyone, so the managers took over the conference rooms and turned them into offices, people hoarded the PC's they'd checked out, etc...
The only difference here is they're keeping the offices for the management types, who will likely be unsympathetic to the employees plight. Imagine working on a project, having to come in and check out a new PC each day, install your development tools on it, carry around a file cabinet sized bag to carry your papers, not have a place to lay them out, then have to put them up at the end of the day. When you leave for lunch, you have to pack EVERYTHING up because anyone could throw your stuff away so they could have your space to work.
Giving someone a predefined place to work (a cube) may seem like crap to some employees (those wanting an office) but it's better than the pods with 6 - 8 people in them in half the space of the same amount of cubes, or the programmer pool where the whole floor is just a bunch of desks facing the managers desk.
Anyway, the Management Genuises who came up with the merged cubes where I work are in hot water over the idea now, they brought it back from one of those hobnobbing management conferences where they blow the training budget for their whole section of the company by staying on the club level of the hotel, flying first class, and eating $50.00 - $100.00 meals.
It can work quite well for a lot of developers (Score:3, Insightful)
My team still meets weekly for lunch discussions but the rest of the time we use IM and email - with the occasional cellphone call - to communicate quite effectively. Today's generation of young University kids grew up on IM so they will have little difficulty adapting to using it over face-to-face contact with co-workers.
Programmers seem to like this sort of thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
At some point, a poll was circulated around my company, asking people what the ideal office size was. It was basically only programmers that answered 3 or 4. Everyone else wanted to share with as few people as possible. Artists, designers, whoever.
I work with 3 other people in my office now, and I really like it. I'm REALLY lazy most of the time, so not having to get up to ask someone a question, and just yelling it out to my office suits me just fine. As well, my two immediate team leads are right near me, so if I have a question about a design decision that I'm making, I can clear it with them if it's sketchy. Why would you want to be in an office by yourself? I've had the office to myself before, and it's usually just kinda lonely.
Nothing beats personal space. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of these people were doing their jobs and I had nothing against them; however, with time the unwanted interraction became a royal pain in the rear. I could cope with the tech support representative because he was was aware of his impact on the "free space" people. Unfortunately that was not true for a couple of women from the sales department...
On my opinion, the best way to improve efficiency is to have a relatively big office with several people whose job is related. I remember sharing an office with a dude from India. We got along pretty well and concentrated on our tasks while helping each other.
Problerms for ADD/ADHD people... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a person that deals with the rollercoaster ride of ADD/ADHD, I would like to see a 'compromise' solution. Keep the top-level management (Pres, VPs, CEO, etc) in offices (just shrink the offices), move the upper-level into cubes, eliminate middle-management, and push groups into group-centric open environments. Groups could move cube partition walls as needed. Leave some 'isolation tank' cubicles (high walls with extra sound dampening) available for people with ADD/ADHD.
As for the wireless 'shared' space - great idea, but where do you put your paper? Forms, documentation, books, etc. all the usual paper that you may need for work needs to be stored somewhere. I suppose you could dream of a paperless office, but I doubt most offices could pull that off effectively. Maybe I'm just 'old school', but my CYA work requires print-outs (since I cannot email these items to a home address). Still, great to see corporations working with wireless.
Re:Those who don't learn the lessons of the past.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans may be by and large social creatures, but we are also territorial. We need space to call our own, for all the reasons cited in the Chiat/Day failure--space to store paper files, meet with clients, place to think in quiet.
If I want to confer with my co-workers, I can generally find them, because they have an office. When I'm done conferring and want to think and/or work uninterrupted, I go back to my office. It's a sign to those you work with--I am here to work and am available for consulting, but I'm not open to constant, distracting chatter.
Working in the common area of the engineering building while in college was great for group work and socializing between classes (gotta take a break once in a while), but if you wanted to work uninterrupted, better break out the headphones. I doubt Chiat would have approved of headphones, being a "personal" item.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, people without good social skills are scum! They should NOT be allowed to earn a living, in fact, they should be shot in the streets like the loathesome dogs that they are!
Jeez, what the hell are YOU doing posting on slashdot?
Not everybody performs well in the same environments. Some people work better alone, when they are left to their own devices, while others need to be in a team where they can share their skills with others.
Its blind and stupid for a company to force all of its employees to submit to one form of work or the other. What they would do, if the decisions weren't made by idiots, is that they would have the social people work in groups to augment their productivity, and let the loners do their projects by themselves to keep them productive too.
Anything else is shortsightedness that borders on nazi human ressources management.
And how is discrimination based on social skills any different from discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or right-handedness?
"Unpopular people need not apply"? Will they have you bring your high-school yearbook as references?
Re:Good Thing (tm) (Score:3, Insightful)
I've noticed that, with shared workspace, one Chatty Cathy or Loudmouth Larry can easily prevent the other 4 people from getting anything done. Then, instead of just losing the productivity of whoever's cube the TalkBot's gravitated towards, you lose everyone's. What do you do then? Fire all 5 because of the one boat anchor employee? Getting rid of folks who do good work, but have trouble telling annoying socializers to leave them alone seems like a waste.
Re:No, bad - it may violate federal laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Cannot expect one-size-fits-all workplace to work (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind the fact that workplace ergonomists consulting with the PHBs are way more into following trends in their own field than in actually noticing what are the needs of employees who will be working in their designer environments. They fail to examine whether certain team members are more productive working in solitary and interacting with others only at the weekly meetings, while others actually are more productive in a common team space. Individualisation is the keyword, but workplace ergonomists fail to understand it.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I've seen the flipside. Brilliant programmers that don't feel that they should have to follow any rules, write their own code, and generally don't get along with anyone. In the end, these people end up being a liability. When they inevitably leave, you can't work with what they left without a considerably longer ramp-up time, and you usually end up re-writing their code anyway, 'cause while it was well designed to do what it was originally intended, their goofy style ends up being inflexible as well.
Programmers that can follow an arbitrary coding standard are, in the long run, more useful than programmers that generate a lot of code that nobody can use.
oh, shut the fuck up (Score:1, Insightful)
Stephen Hawking's job is to "think" and the slashdotter you're mocking seems to be employed to write software, not to chit-chat.
Personally I like to have a social space available, but I'd like some private space for things like reading documentation and thinking/learning.
So what's wrong with providing the anti-social geeks with a room of their own? Would you rather they starved to death?
We take care of people with problems - that's what's makes us human - and it's been my experience that some (not all) of these anti-socials are smarter and can understand things faster than most.
Some of them have adapted to the group life, but they took it slow with baby steps.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:3, Insightful)
That's fine if you're looking at management or sales or getting-laid, but creative people often need peace and quiet so they can fill their heads with variables.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:5, Insightful)
They had, now the idiot boss is following the trend-of-the-week and changing the rules on them. They are going to loose many of their best elements, and end up loosing a lot (see Darwin).
The color of your skin, or the god(s) you believe in will have no effect on your ability to perform a job function.
What if your job has you workin on sabbat? What about low blood sugar during ramadan? There are plenty of factors that affect productivity.
Being friendly, charismatic, and relatively good-looking had done far more for me than my IT skills ever have or ever will.
Well, that says it all. Really.
Have fun enjoying your pasasitic life, brownnosing for your salary. Fortunatly its going to be very funny when your office is full of incompetant people socializing with each other and nobody's doing the job : )
trade offs (Score:2, Insightful)
Every developer I've ever talked to has indicated that they do their best work when alone. Yeah, you need group meetings periodically, and every once in awhile need to bounce some ideas off a colleague. But when it comes down to finishing up some new module, or finding some tricky bug, focus and the ability to concentrate are key. This will become a lot harder in an "open" environment. So all that money saved in real estate costs will end up being gobbled up by lost productivity.
The other thing is, I bet you any money, managers still have offices. They had them before in cube-land, and they'll have them now. The difference is that the divide between lowly-developer and management will become even more pronounced. This doesn't lead to a very egalitarian work environment, meaning less job satisfaction among employees, which again translates to decreased productivity.
So why the transition to an "open" environment if there's going to be a decrease in productivity? Because saving costs on real estate is something that can be immediately quantified and measured by management. "Loss in productivity" is one of those wishy-washy things that can be attributed to half a dozen different things without any real certainty. Took longer to get version 2 out the door than version 1? It was because there were more complicated features to do for version 2, less skilled developers on the team this time around, etc, etc. (Of course, the one reason that would never be suggested -- at least by management -- is management's decision to change to an "open" work environment.) Being able to quantify something and show a short-term benefit on a balance sheet, while being oblivious to consequences that are less easily quanitified and more long-term, is what management types excel at.
The best environment I ever worked in was when I was at IBM and we had shared offices. There would be two developers to an office, one senior, and one more junior. That way the more junior developer could always have someone there to ask a question when he got stuck and the more senior developer was not just relegated to an isolated office to code all the really hard stuff by himself. That was several years ago; unfortunately, from what I've heard, since then IBM has also been moving to cubeland. (On a bright note though, even first-line managers get cubes, so they're "down in the trenches" with the developers, which is a good thing.)
Re:Well that sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
On the upside, I rarely get interrupted by walk-ups, most communication is via chat/e-mail (which is good because I have poor aural memory). I can listen to the music that I want, or work without and I don't have to listen to the person 3 cubes down talking about their marital problems.
The bigger benefit is that I don't have to commute 90 min/day. My 2-year old car only has 9500 miles on it. I get paid a salary that would be under-average if I worked/lived at the main office but is above-average for the area where I live.
Flexible schedule: It's near-trivial to schedule doctor appointments, etc.
Now, the downsides...
Even us anti-social hermits need some amount of face-to-face interaction. Back when I was traveling up to the main office on a monthly basis, I'd say I was a little happier. (The recession has cut trip frequency to twice per year.) I don't pick up on the undercurrents as easily (I have to specifically ask about situation X).
The self-discipline is tough... have to keep a solid routine (rise at 7am, bed at 11pm) or you'll find it difficult to meet your goals. The job needs to be something with measurable (and multitudes of) mileposts. Very easy to spend a few hours in unproductive web surfing or
Self-reliance helps, because unlike the office environment, it's more difficult to get an answer to a minor question (rather then just asking your cubemate).
Another issue is that there's no "decompression time" built into your schedule. A commute of 10-15 minutes is a good thing if you work a high-stress job because that's just long enough to set the stress aside before you get home. (Your family will thank you for that.)
The last problem is that I'm never "off-duty". When you work in a formal office environment, people are very hesitant to call if you're not in the office. (There's a social barrier.) When you're telecommuting and they always interact with you over the phone, they can't tell that you're trying to be off-duty. Learning to say "no" helps a lot though.
Re:Well that sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
That was exactly my first thought. I've got a small library of reference books at my desk, and if I was forced to hunt around for a new workspace every day I would quickly grow exasperated and just use the company's internet connection to surf Dice and Monster instead of doing my job. Besides, humans are territorial animals. It's hardwired into us to want to be able to say "that's mine", taking that ability away from your employees is only going to depress the lot of them.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you supose they could be women as well?
Office Spaced... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've lost count of the times I've asked someone to relay a message because the person I was trying to contact was not at his/her desk only to be told email him or IM him when he gets back. YOU'RE SITTING RIGHT THERE FOR CHRIST SAKE!! Is it really that hard to turn around and say so and so was looking for you?
I think the social effects of IM as a primary communication tool is something we ignore all too much. Programmers, as a geek species in particular, tend to be somewhat solitary people. The added convenience of not having to talk to someone face to face only makes these habits worse IMHO. Sure, it's great for productivity. I get a massive amount of work done just from the benefit of not having to talk to anyone. I can answer and instant message by touch typing without even thinking about it (especially in linux as opposed to finding the window in the start bar in windows which distracts me greatly), but there is more to everyone's heirarchy of needs than just being productive.
Cutting off the sociable ability of being able to physically converse with someone face to face is something we should not let deteriorate without consideration. I can go for hours (at least 4 at most 6) without even using my vocal chords. I, for one, think this is a very dangerous trend.
Instant productivity? Balls! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, if you're a paper-pusher.
If you're a software developer or hardware engineer, it takes a certain amount of isolation in order to be productive. Even though I have an office (shared) at work, both of us in there find that we get our best work done after all the interruptions have gone home at 5pm.
Chip H.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:3, Insightful)
Lack of productivity = lack of good management (Score:3, Insightful)
If management could simply grasp the concept that their employees are individuals, they could mold the workplace to suit everyone so that issues like this wouldn't occur. If you like working at home, work at home, you work better in a group then so be it, and if your that "hermit" who works best alone though wants the interaction of at least BEING there then that could work as well.
When I was in Special Projects for a while I saw all these situations occur. I had employees come to me complaining that they didn't feel productive at home, that they needed the interaction of fellow employees (at least available) to have criticsm readily available. I also noticed that we in management didn't meet those needs. As a result people felt less cared for and lost affinity with their employer. Once we instituted a means for personal preference to become a factor in our employment and dispersal capacities, we notice a significant increase in productivity.
Re:Cannot expect one-size-fits-all workplace to wo (Score:5, Insightful)
Add that to firing people who don't work well in the new system (hm, sounds like an excuse for a targetted RIF if you ask me), and it's an all around lousy way to do business.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether you are able to follow coding standards or not says very little about whether you are useful. Code that nobody can use is useless of course, but so is code that follows coding standards but doesnt solve the right problem. Truly brilliant programmers produce code that is *eaiser* to understand than average programmers. In almost any project with real complexity, the problem is very vague. The difference between brilliant programmers and average programmers
is the problem they choose to solve rather than the code they use to solve it.
A Star Trek Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
"Computer, where is Creative Director Algers?"
"Creative Director Algers is in the Can."
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:4, Insightful)
But at the same time I need some privacy to get some actual work done without hearing 10 other people chatter about what they're doing. Plus it's just a question of basic human dignity to not always be under obvservation/monitoring.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:3, Insightful)
And while you're right about complex problems taking a special kind of insight to solve, the truth of programming is that it's largely simplistic tasks broken up by the occasional bout of complexity. Usually, that complexity is easily decomposed into many more mundane tasks. Usually, working hard can almost be a substitute for being clever.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:2, Insightful)
It's different because it affects your performance at the job.
Ok let's say you're a big smart genius programmer. But your team mates do not feel comfortable talking to you. Performance suffers because of your inability to communicate with others to ensure that the project is being developed in an optimal way. May be you're so smart and efficient that you've foresaw the necessity to write library X but didn't tell anyone so your coworkers spent a few days developing the same thing, and if they came to let you know of this new development you said "I already got it done jerkwads." All of a sudden the fact that you're brilliant and efficient does not make up for the fact that you're more or less useless to the team due to your attitude and resistance to open communication.
being black, female, hindu, or left-handed does not have the same negative impact.
Re:They SHOULD fire them (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you've hit the nail on the head, but there's two sides of this I think still make the brilliant programmer stand out.
First, the brilliant programmer recognizes this and doesn't get flustered by the complexity. They just attack the problem in a thoughtful and efficient manner. That probably includes doing the appropiate amount of design work to get a non-crappy solution.
Second they can quickly implement the mundane tasks. Often times "average" people have trouble implementing even mundane tasks, it's really pretty scary.
But certainly everyone should be following coding standards. Your previous complaint seemed to be "a morass of code"; but you seem to be forgetting that any programmer, brilliant or otherwise, could produce that and still follow coding standards
Re:Lack of productivity = lack of good management (Score:3, Insightful)
The keyword that management needs to grasp is productivity, specificly what is the best way of achiveiving that by offering each worker the optimal working space for their prefered work methodology:
Exactly where and how an employee performs his duties is completely irrelevant. The only important issue is meeting deadlines while delivering quality workmanship. Letting an employee work at the location where he is the most productive is the only practical way of achieving that.