Dude, how about a trigger warning next time?
Or better yet, put me next to the salespeople that instead of making calls all day are just goofing off.
I’ve worked next to people with zero volume control and who like to take calls on speakerphone.
I decided there and then that cubicles has material benefits over open offices.
Young me's head would explode if I got a glimpse into a future where cubicles are now looked at as the good old days.
And the progression keeps going with a lot of companies that have open office "hot desking" where not only are you working in a chaotic open environment, but you don't even have your own little space there from day to day.
All of this makes it seem increasingly bizarre to me that a lot of the industry was forced to make remote work viable through the pandemic and many companies saw productivity go up and now a lot of them are trying to claw back on remote as quickly as possible.
Also, companies aren't independent entities with their own will. They are just groups of people.
Lets say it that way, such a mindset ought to be valuable to the extreme. Thats why we see a constant stream of meddle-managers, setting out to make compliance and "apply presure" startups. Its definatly at the core of value generation.
And I theorized that one aspect of hotdesking is absolute control over employees by having them go through the experience of “clearing their desk” every day so they feel like they’re fired every day. This puts the grunts back in their place and keeps everyone docile because you know you’re just a cog and your job is not a permanent thing at all but rather something that you must work hard at earning again for the next day, lest today’s daily desk clearing be your last one.
This building is scheduled for demolition and we're being moved to an open-area workspace in a new building.
At least it's above trendy retail so we can get overpriced coffee and sushi on our lunch breaks.
The cubicle was invented in the 60s as a way to liberate people from the tyranny of the open plan office (just look at film from before then — say, “The Apartment” —- and you’ll see the open plan was the norm.
It’s a shame that the cubicle itself became a tool and exemplar of anomie.
It feels like I can get away with only a few hours of what to me feels like productive work a week. Actually, I had a really good day last week, but then it takes days for the feature to pass review, rework for said review (often trivial remarks), and to end up in the main branch ready for deployment.
The first thing I noticed about white collar work was how gossipy and lazy everyone was. We didn't have time for that in blue collar work. I had no idea how these people were useful to work or society.
It seems so bizarre to me, even today, that most white collar jobs make more money. It's like they took the people who couldn't work physically, made them feel superior, and for some reason paid them unreasonable wages.
> It's like they took the people who couldn't work physically, made them feel superior, and for some reason paid them unreasonable wages.
Easy killer, you're projecting.
I could go back to being a bartender today, and could do 90% of the job (I'd have to refresh my memory how to mix a few drinks, but most of em are still there). I could probably go back to Private Investigator, or food truck work too.
But it took a whole lotta learning to get to the point where I can do my current white collar job. No one I bartended with could stay sober 4+ days a week or avoid DUIs; no way in hell I'd trust them with a production GCP cluster.
In one of the companies I worked for, it was comfortable in the beginning - there were offices, 2-3 programmers in each, not too crowded, but close enough to see when the coworkers were focusing on something and when it would be ok to do a quick "hey, do you know how to...". The company grew, moved to a bigger building, rooms became larger, now there were 4-5 programmers in each. It was still OK then. Calls and longer talks were done in separate rooms, and a quick chat with the guy next to you could be done like you'd do it in a cinema - quietly.
When I was leaving the company years later, it was after it moved to a place with one huge open space and a set of rooms that you needed to book days in advance to use. Some of them were permanently occupied by "important" people even though they had their own offices. That resulted in everybody and they're cat making calls and meetings and sometimes even plannings right in the middle of the open space or in the kitchen. Finally, a "hot desk" system was implemented, and you had to book your desk days in advance.
I asked the CTO who I've know for quite some time - WTF man? He said that he likes it, because he can see at a glance that everybody is working. I was reminded of storehouses with special elevated rooms that had a view on all that happens on the floor. Saying that I got disillusioned doesn't even begin to describe what I've felt then...
This kind of panopticon is how prisons are often organized.
I can be lying on a couch working hard. How does the CTO see that? The typing part is just the tip of the iceberg.
It is amazing that most knowledge worker management does not understand how knowledge workers work. Most of our hardest work does not involve hands on a keyboard.
I've been full remove for a decade. There's no way I could work in an office where "butts in chairs" was the way. I guess I would just have a notepad and a pencil and just sort of move my hand back and forth on it while I was in my head solving the real problems.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-panopticon-effect...
My teen jobs were in stores, restaurants, and manufacturing. In those contexts, everybody understands that when you're working, you're actually working. Even managers understand that even small discussions need to be fit neatly into the flow of the work, and actual meetings require careful planning to not disrupt operations. The space too was carefully designed to maximize effectiveness.
So American office culture seems absolutely wild to me. Especially in software, where we are expected to fit our actual work into a sort of calendar Tetris. Oh, a grand poobah would like another status meeting, plus a lot of time spent coming up with estimates that are not going to change anybody's behavior in the slightest? Gosh, do you think that might have an effect on the completion date? And sure, why don't you put me next to the salespeople making calls all day. I'm not making any progress anyhow.
The only conclusion I can come to is that in a lot of places, productivity is much lower on the list of observed priorities than stated priorities.