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.'"
I have no idea.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why people still like cubicles.
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 think cubicles aren't very good for morale anyway.
Re:Causality (Score:4, Interesting)
I have (or had) a small cubicle which squeezed a computer, chair, and closet (for coat) in a space barely large enough to lay down.
BUT the company compensated for that small space by replacing the 4th wall with a window which gave the impression of more space, plus other benefits like being able to wear jeans everyday (nice jeans not wholey jeans), a free lunch, unlimited access to the internet to hear the radio/watch hulu, and so on. Making the cube small doesn't matter if the workers are treated with respect.
In contrast my new job has no cubes and open space, but you're free to do nothing (no radio, no eating lunch at your desk, no privacy). I don't hate it but I don't like it either. I'd rather have liberty even if it meant my cube was the size of my old dormroom's desk.
Re:I have no idea.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Companies like cubicles because they are a vastly cheaper way to convert warehouse type space to office like space, and while they don't completely block out noise, they divert it enough so that while one worker is on the phone with a customer, that customer hears you, not the person sitting next to you talking about her cat.
Having worked in call centers with cubicles and without, I vastly prefer cubicles, though I'd prefer never to work in a call center again (both of those were college temp jobs).
I do some telecommuting, but having moved to an Agile team at work makes that a bit more difficult (we don't follow Agile exactly because employees are strewn across about 6 sites, but we do use a lot of collaboration tech to work around that, like virtual teleconferencing and netmeeting-like desktop sharing).
Re:Causality (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily. I know for myself, I have a much harder time staying focused and getting work done at home than when I'm "on the job" somewhere. To give you an idea how drastic it is, when I'm trying to "work from home" I barely get anything worthwhile done. When I'm "on the job", I'm one of the best, most efficient guys on the team. I get twice as much done as some of the other guys.
I really wish that weren't the case, because I'd much prefer working from home.
Re:It's not driven by real estate prices (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know how it works in the US, but if the UK is anything to go by your view is probably wrong.
Commercial landlords - indeed, the entire commercial letting industry - is a law unto itself. My own employer moved offices when our previous landlord would not reduce the rent (even though the going rate was dropping as offices were becoming empty). They were told clearly, in simple terms: rent goes down or we go out. Rent did not go down. We left a couple of months after a number of other tenants in that building did. I wouldn't be surprised if that building is 70 or 80% empty today.
There's all sorts of other things you can get in commercial leases which anyone who didn't know the industry would think absurd. "Repairing leases" (where you have to carry out any repairs to the fabric of the building - all the responsibilities of ownership, none of the benefits!) aren't that uncommon, and if you happen to take on a building which requires a lot of repair work - tough. You can actually be forced to return the building to the landlord in a better state to how you took it on.
Another one I've heard of is where the landlord charges you £X/square foot then includes things like staircases and toilets in their calculation of how large the office is. (You don't normally include these things when you do this arithmetic - £X/square foot usually means £x/useful square foot, not including staircases, kitchen areas etc). Next thing you know you've accidentally signed yourself to a contract paying double the going rate, you can't get out of it and you can't sub-let it without losing money unless you can find someone equally stupid. For bonus points, the landlord has demanded that the director of the business acts as a personal guarantor - only way out of the contract then is to declare yourself bankrupt.
Faced with an industry full of sharks like that, anyone with any sense will do everything in their power to minimise their exposure.
Re:Hear hear (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Causality (Score:5, Interesting)
shitass countries [ncbuy.com].
"The law does not provide workers with the right to remove themselves from work situations that endanger health and safety without jeopardizing their continued employment."
"State governments were responsible for enforcement of the Factories Act. However, the large number of industries covered by a small number of factory inspectors and the inspectors' limited training and susceptibility to bribery resulted in lax enforcement.
The enforcement of safety and health standards also was poor."
I'll say it again. Shitass countries.
Re:Working from Home? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:new (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Desk Space has become irrelevant (Score:4, Interesting)
That was my first though when I read the summary too... "duh, how obvious" - as we move closer and closer to being truly paperless, officer workers need less and less space to spread out papers or to store files.
I hate to invoke 'kids these days' - but it really does apply here. Anyone under thirty or so has almost certainly never experienced an 'old style' office - when PC's became ubiquitous in the 90's, things changed radically.
My wife is an accountant and CFO for a local business and keeps a set of the ledgers from the 1980's in her office - they fill a shelf three feet long. (She says when she's frustrated because the server is slow or down, looking at that shelf reminds her of how good she actually has it.) She also points out all she has is the ledgers, the ancillary material like invoices, timesheets, sales tickets, etc... would take up even more space. If she wasn't required to keep a physical paper trail of some things for legal and tax reasons, she wouldn't even have a filing cabinet in her office. The old storage room for such stuff is now an employee break room. The refrigerator in the break room is bigger than the annual amount of paper she has to store nowadays.
She also points out that in the 1980's the business required an accountant, two full time bookkeepers, and a full time filing clerk. Today, despite the business being ten times larger, there's just her and a full time data entry clerk. The phone girl files in her spare time.
For another example: In my book collection, I have a book on office organization intended for professional engineers, draftsmen, and architects from the 1950's - it dedicates three entire chapters (almost half the book) to the theory and practice of laying out work spaces for engineers and draftsmen. You lay it out one way for buildings, another for ships, a different way for airplanes... All trying to solve the problem of mapping a 3D physical object onto/into a 2D drafting room such that guys (and it was all guys back then) working on adjacent parts/rooms/spaces/systems were close enough to each other to collaborate. (When something like the working drawings for the engine room of a ship could stretch thirty feet or an entire deck could stretch a hundred or more if laid end-to-end this was a real problem.) The offices were open plan because they had to be, because there was no other way to collaborate but to physically transport yourself or the drawing to the individual(s) you needed to communicate with.