Companies Move Away From Cubicle Culture

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."

Comments

Re:Used to be one of them

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I think the key here is that it does work for some, and doesn't for others. I would be less productive giving up my office for a communal space.

Several years ago, my entire department abandoned the communal space idea (except for some few people working on a few features that benefited from it) in favor of 1 or 2 person offices. Our productivity is much better, and has been for several years.

Something that management at the companies that are completely eliminating personal space based on short term studies need to remember is a study a couple years ago that almost ANY change in work environment will improve productivity, for a short time.

Changes (small ones) in light level, ambient sound, wall color, and desk facing were shown to improve productivity, but within a few months it returned to prior levels.

Fortunately, for the moment, management at my company is more reasonable (helps that we don't have an artificially interpereted productivity problem to begin with, I suppose)

As an aside, I'm amused by the children spouting "good! fire them, more room for me!"

I know I wouldn't want to work in an open office space, with no cover, knowing there were hundreds of disgruntled, anti-social nerds out there with nothing to do...nerds that had been fired from the job that I was doing... nosir, I wouldn't feel comfortable in that position at all... talk about Karma...

Re:If you don't work in the office ....

[Alien54]

You don't expect the croporate overlords to be that forward-thinking, don't you???

Exactly. I don't. In fact, I expect them to use this as a reason to work faster to get their "piece of the action"