Cubicles a Giant Mistake

J to the D writes "Apparently even the designer of the cubicle believes now that they are a bad idea." From the article: "After years of prototyping and studying how people work, and vowing to improve on the open-bullpen office that dominated much of the 20th century, Propst designed a system he thought would increase productivity (hence the name Action Office). The young designer, who also worked on projects as varied as heart pumps and tree harvesters, theorized that productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them, not just stacked in an in-box."

What the dead believe

[liveinthewire]

"even the designer of the cubicle believes now that they are a bad idea."

Unlikely, since he's been dead for several years.

Not quite true

[WindBourne]

Some of the other articles speak about that he still likes the cubicles. What he objects to, is small cubicles. When he designed it, they were about the size of a standard office. Now, they are about 1/6 to 1/8 of the size of an office. Big difference.

Re:What the dead believe

[_xeno_]

Yeah, he died in 2000, according to this FORTUNE article [cnn.com] which was posted in this Slashdot story [slashdot.org]. From the first paragraph of the article:

Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called "monolithic insanity."

You should read the article. It mentions that he's dead, and it explains (based on accounts by his still-living peers) how his original Action Office devolved into the cubicle.

"Now" believes it was a mistake?

[Rick Genter]

If you read TFA, you'll see that Probst, the inventor of the cubicle, died in 2000. It was actually before then that he realized that cubicles were a mistake...

Re:From the perspective of a new cube monkey...

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Most leased office space is as you describe. Most of the inner walls are more or less temporary. When you agree to sign a multo year lease, they will move walls around for you. That is why many leased office spaces are so crappy. The walls are quickly thrown together dry wall, with doors etc....

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Just Another Tool

[fm6]

That's funny. I work at a company where almost everybody has a private office. And yet lots of people go home to work to get away from the distractions!

The way to eliminate distractions is not to build walls, but to build awareness of people's needs. People need to be aware of how the noise they make affects others. That's not just important in cube land — somebody with a nasty case of "cell phone shout" can reach through walls!

I do one better...

[Anonymous Coward]

I SSH to my home box and run a browser on my system by forwarding X through the tunnel - everything is encrypted and no logs are kept on my system at work. Browsing is a little slower but not unbearable if I compress the stream.

Re:My personal opinion...

[Artifakt]

The word you want is depreciation, not devaluation. Office furniture is usually depreciated with a period of either 5 or 7 years, for example stock shelves are usually figured at 5, file cabinets at 7, and so on. (if memory serves, the lawmakers in the New York legislature that first set up this system in the US (about 1790) actually had a debate where it was argued that shelves handled by the general public depreciate a bit faster than most office furniture since the latter is only being handled by people of the employable classes).
Buildings and fixed constructions of various types are depreciated over 15 year (seen a lot for fences, baseball park benches and backstops, and such), 27.5 (the period most often required for residential rental property), 29, 39 (usually for non-residential real property) or 40 year periods. For these longer times, the periods that are only a year or two off of others exist mostly because there are some options such as straight line depreciation vrs various curves where more of the total comes off in the first years and less in the later ones, and these have become associated with specific periods.
        Land itself is never depreciated, and generally appreciates instead, which is one reason why real estate almost always increases in value.
        For what it's worth, helicopters depreciate in 5 years, and working horses still under age 12 in 7 years. There's lots of things beside fixtures and buildings that can be depreciated.
        Depreciation does NOT mean the same thing as devaluation. No one is claiming by taking depreciation that any car over 5 years old is somehow totally worthless, for example. The claim is that the worth that remains comes not just from the initial money spent on the car but increasingly from more money spent on maintenance and upkeep. This approach is pretty fair in most cases - how much is a 5 year old car that's never been serviced going to be worth? What shape would a 27.5 year old rental property be in if the landlord didn't do any maintenance, painting, or repairs the whole time?
        In more complex business situations, a lot of depreciation is basically "What's the equivalent of a 14 year old assembly line set-up likely to be worth in terms of potential profit to the business, if a competitor has a 3 year old version, or a brand new one?" (Or, if a potential competitor could rely on you having to stick with the 14 year old stuff for at least 10 more years before you could even consider replacing it, what would that do to your bottom line?).
        One good example of this is a car used for business. The car can be depreciated using a standard curve that also allows taking standard mileage, but if the business does this, they can't claim the maintenance, gas, oil, and so on. Alternately, they can claim the maintenance, parts, and actual fuel and oil costs, but then there's no depreciation or standard mileage at all allowed.