America's Cubicles Are Shrinking 484
Hugh Pickens writes "In the 1970s, American corporations typically thought they needed 500 to 700 square feet per employee to build an effective office, but the LA Times reports that today's average is a little more than 200 square feet per person, and the space allocation could hit a mere 50 square feet by 2015. 'We're at a very interesting inflection point in real estate history,' says Peter Miscovich, who studies workplace trends. 'The next 10 years will be very different than the last 30.' Although cubicles have shrunk from an average of 64 feet to 49 feet in recent years, companies are looking for more ways to compress their real estate footprint with offices that squeeze together workstations while setting aside a few rooms where employees can conduct meetings or have private phone conversations. 'Younger workers' lives are all integrated, not segregated,' says Larry Rivard. 'They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever.'"
Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
"Younger workers' lives are all integrated, not segregated," says Larry Rivard. "They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever."
Could that be because their office space has become so worthless that anywhere else is preferable?
Re:Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing how corporations will justify whatever they want.
Because people are not given a choice but to work in less space, they therefore say that they don't need it or want it.
Question: did they ask the workers (really ask them...anonymously)? .02
-JJS
It's not driven by real estate prices (Score:5, Insightful)
In most areas, commercial real estate is going empty.
This is being driven by a desire to control employees. They want to huddle them close together so they are easier to watch and they tend to police each other.
Re:Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely agree.
And to me "they've learned to work at a kitchen table or wherever" is only a small step away from "they're all on call 24/7, because they can work wherever they happen to be."
Re:I have no idea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently, I have a cubicle somewhere in the building... I don't know where it is; I've never seen it. I assume it's like all the other cubicles in the building.. I work in a lab primarily because I need access to hardware and test equipment... The lab is somewhat open-plan but I have a private little corner that I've managed to arrange by moving benches around... It's noisy enough in the lab that I can keep from getting distracted by people milling about or make my phone calls without anyone listening in... I can focus for long periods when I need to and the restricted access to the lab prevents a lot of people from just wandering in for a visit...
When I need to communicate with my cow-orkers, we all use Jabber.. If you're focused, you can hide your jabber window and not be disturbed... I get to choose when distraction is permissible or unwanted.
Misguided Rationalization (Score:3, Insightful)
Y'know when I was younger I would have worked on a shelf if it meant I had a job and I was doing something I loved, I don't see this as anything new.
I really can't think of any cube environment I've worked in that was conducive to work, the best environments always seem to have been open, yet not too big. An open room with 6 to 8 people seems to be the magic zone.
The biggest cube I worked in was at the Provincial Gov't, they had this massive 1960s job that had two chairs, a proper desk, a fully adjustable "computer" desk and a coat rack. I kinda liked that cube because there was enough room for small meetings, pair programming and it gave you some space for thinking (without having three other noisy people two meters away from you all the time). In fact it wasn't until I got into a modern cube farm that I had to go out and buy noise cancelling headphones (though very nearly a noise cancelling shotgun).
It's weird, with walls people are loud and obnoxious, with no walls they have respect for each other.
Re:Causality (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, animals with herd instincts do feel most calm and protected when they’re being squeezed shoulder to shoulder. So do some autistic people.
Re:Working from Home? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work from home and have done so for over ten years now. I've made it work successfully. I will very openly state that many of my coworkers cannot effectively work from home.
The reasons that work from home isn't always a good idea vary. Some people require the human face to face contact. Others require the firmer separation, the act of actually going to another building to put them in the work mindset. Some do not have a home situation amenable to working from home. Some are just in jobs that require too much interaction with the rest of the team or just cannot be done remotely. (People who's job requires physical access to specific hardware without waiting an hour for the person to get there.)
Even many of my coworkers who do work from home make excuses to go into the office periodically to meet with peers for lunch. This helps smooth over issues so that work is done more smoothly.
Desk Space has become irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Causality (Score:4, Insightful)
Shocker of shockers... no, not really.
Once upon a time, workers had to deal with crap working conditions in which getting killed was commonplace. In shitass countries like India, or Malaysia, or China where all the manufacturing has been "outsourced" to for slave-labor wages, this is still true.
Today, the US has laws and agencies that are supposed to prevent this. But companies run by the soulless, inhuman "I have an MBA and never did a fucking day of real honest work in my life" types will try to get around it however they can.
OSHA says you have to have an office where phone calls can be private? Fine, we'll give you one "private phone room" for 20 employees. OSHA says you have to have a 30 minute lunch break? Fine, but we'll stick the kitchen in another building 10 minutes walk away, good luck getting there and back and still managing to do anything but bolt your lunch at choking-hazard speeds, sucker, or you can take a bag lunch in and keep it in your desk and you might as well work while eating anyways.
What we need to do is bust up the megacorporations and get rid of the top-level leech class that don't produce anything. But good luck seeing that happen any time soon. Those tax-evading assholes have too much media control to get the word out about them.
Re:I have no idea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The place I worked had an open plane. My team members had connecting desks to each other. If I needed anything (since I worked in ICT - needing someone else is common) - all I had to do it talk, or move my chair a bit.
I would love to go back to a cubicle.
I am the guy stuck sitting next to you. While you get your quick response by leaning over, I get my train of thought derailed.
And most of the time, you're bugging me for something you should be able to find for yourself in the documentation or something you should be doing yourself.
The rest of the office does not exist to do your bidding. Maybe having your own space is bad for your morale, because then you'd have to do your own work, but for me, having my own defined space where I can concentrate without interruption, increases my morale by about 1000%.
Re:Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
Executive offices are fairly astonishing in size. Part of it is due to tabulatory gigantism -- the need to have the largest possible desk, despite the fact that many don't even "work at a desk". This latter aspect drives a lot of the large executive office syndrome; they "don't work at a desk" therefore they need the space for a living room setup, complete with a big leather couch, designer table, and a couple of chairs and a large flat screen TV & entertainment setup.
They also need a kitchenette setup (Keurig coffee machine, fridge for beer/pop, liquor, glasses, ice) and in many cases a private bathroom, because they want to be able to offer refreshments and a restroom for them and their guests.
One of the major ironies about all this space being devoted to them is that it stands empty much of the time due to their extensive travel requirements (cf. justification for Netjets/company airplane).
I sometimes wonder why they don't skip all the executive suites and instead build a small hotel on corporate campuses and hire a hotel company to manage it. The executives could be given a generic "large" office (of the type generally assigned to on-site senior working managers; large enough for a desk, conference table and four chairs, but not the big suites) and a group of suites in the hotel could be set aside for executives involved in meetings for which their "living room" setup would be required; the hotel's concierge and other staff could be used for food/beverage and other conveniences.
The side benefit would be a functional hotel that could be used for out of town employees, vendors and others needing accommodations and working on campus.
Re:I have no idea.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no idea how the whole country has become so oversocialized. Privacy is important to be an individual. How can you know who you are if you have never been alone? Without working alone, how can you realize that it is the individual that does the work, not the collective? How can you get any work done at all when you are constantly distracted (and spied on) by other people? Forcing "togetherness" was a great socialist tool back in the Soviet times, to ensure that you never imagine yourself as an individual, that you never have unapproved thoughts, and that if you do either of those things you can get ratted out and sent to Siberia.
Hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)
I currently work in an open-plan environment. My job requires some significant coding work (requiring total focus for long periods of time) while all of my colleagues are involved in much more piecemeal work. They have absolutely no comprehension of how frustrating and damaging it is to my productivity to be subjected to their distracted working pattern all day.
There are definite benefits to working open-plan, but for some tasks it is simply inappropriate and detrimental.
Re:Already there. (Score:2, Insightful)
You're only already there because you accept their bullshit.
Turn the fucking phone off when your work day is over, and don't turn it back on until you are back in the next day. If part of your job is to be on call, turn the phone on only when you are on your on call hours.
A change in attitude like this will severely piss your management off, as they are used to exploiting you. But do some shit that looks like you are trying to help. If you are facing having to do overtime to get a job done, don't do the job and go home - and when management go ballistic tell them that you didn't want to rack up overtime costs for them. And that you are willing to work if they are willing to pay you your overtime.
Ultimately you need to work what you are contracted to work. Don't flatly refuse to do more, offer your help in the work place, just make it clear that you need to be well compensated. You'll see a lot less kitchen tables if you stop letting them walk all over you.
Re:Causality (Score:4, Insightful)
Try that with programmers and watch your productivity go down the loo.
I was once working as the head of a team with a rather big company I'd rather not name. Let's say it was a German company, known for its big S and its bananaware. We took over a huge internal project. To explain: Internal projects are gold mines. You can charge what you want and the other departments have to pay it because there is simply no other place to get it from. You DO NOT WANT to lose an internal project. For no reason whatsoever. Why? Because even if your cost rises, you just add it to the price tag and they HAVE to pay it. You need money to cross-finance other projects? Jack up the price! It's the (internal) license for money printing.
So we snatched that project from another department that failed to deliver. That's the only threat there is: Not delivering.
So what would be the sensible thing to do? Stuff your best and brightest into that project, of course! You MUST NOT lose that project! You can basically hang your whole department onto it and it will hold! The rest of the company MUST pay you!
What was offered to me? Temp workers. Yes. You heard me. Temps. Not REALLY the most motivated people there are, right? Especially, have you ever hired programmers on a temp worker base?
Most of you will know, it takes a while 'til a programmer gets productive. Especially when you take over a HUGE project that consists of VERY crappy code that you yourself are still busy digging into. They're basically, at best, useless the first month. If, and only if, they're able to learn by themselves, which most temp proggers are. Because if they were any GOOD proggers, they wouldn't be forced to suffer a temp agency.
And while they're with you, they spend more time studying the classifieds than the code. Because who in their sane mind wants to work for a temp agency? It's not like programmers are bricklayers or plumbers. There are not THAT many. So even the mediocre ones get permanent jobs easily. In short, no programmer stayed longer than 3 months.
Eventually, after half a year and a pretty much stalled project I put my foot down and declared that either I get to hire programmers on a perm base or I quit.
I found a new job pretty soon. In the words I gave my superior back then: "More money, less you".
Re:Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing how corporations will justify whatever they want.
Because people are not given a choice but to work in less space, they therefore say that they don't need it or want it.
Question: did they ask the workers (really ask them...anonymously)? .02
-JJS
This is strikingly similar to the attitude a previous CTO of mine expressed when we were remodeling workspaces (yes, the CTO got involved in cubicle design). His idea was "big open room, no walls, no cubicles...to foster a 'collaborative working environment'".
I tried til I was blue in the face to explain to him we don't have a business that benefits from collaboration...individuals work on individual projects mostly. He wouldn't listen.
After the remodel, and the office sounded like a bus station caffeteria from people talking, using the phone, typing, meetings (nope, no meeting rooms either), etc, most people you'd see would have headphones on to block out the noise. The CTO, he just went into his office and kept the door closed.
Re:I have no idea.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I am the guy stuck sitting next to you. While you get your quick response by leaning over, I get my train of thought derailed.
And most of the time, you're bugging me for something you should be able to find for yourself in the documentation or something you should be doing yourself.
This is the consequences of the real world of corporations, where they think that "on the job training" is actually some form of training. What it really means is that the new starter is thrown in the deep end, and told to get on with the job straight away. If they are lucky they will be pointed to the documentation, but they won't be provided with time to properly study the documentation or the product, so 99% of the time it is quicker for that person to ask an existing team member rather than start to try and get themselves familiar with the documentation.
After a couple of people have been through a role that has on the job training, that documentation will be well out of date and unmaintained, and essentially useless. So questions become the only way people can do anything. And then you end up with some people in a team who are constantly answering questions, and their productivity plummets by the metrics that management choose to use: the ones that will make them look great, and the workers not. Which can justify another round of bonuses at the top.
The rest of the office does not exist to do your bidding. Maybe having your own space is bad for your morale, because then you'd have to do your own work, but for me, having my own defined space where I can concentrate without interruption, increases my morale by about 1000%.
Hmmm, you must be liked by management in your work place.
They make you work in an open plan environment, and you attack your colleagues? Well, that plays into the hands of management, and if you are lucky you might get offered some scraps from the table. When you bitch about your colleagues, management have reasons to with hold pay rises, promotions, bonuses, etc., and they can lavish those on themselves instead. If you are lucky they might not be able to come up with an excuse to not reward you, but to be realistic there are probably others playing the same game as you, and ultimately the pressure is for mgmt to reward themselves, and no one else.