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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."
Like any tool, the fault isn't the tool but the people using it. I've worked in (and helped design) some "cubicles" that were closer to Propst's vision... less a cubicle farm than a garden. They beat working in a doored, fully-walled office, and definitely were better than what used to come before them (rows and columns of desks, one-room-schoolhouse style).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Open plan is even worse, jesus christ I can't bear open plan, oh dear god please don't make me go back to open plan, please!
Unfortunately, stating that it was a bad idea decades after the fact does nothing for the poor beings trapped in these small cages.
My first real programming job had me working in a lab with a few other students at an internship. We worked in an environment where we could all see what we were doing because of the total lack of privacy. Now that I am a graduate and a cube monkey, what I see is that cubicles offer the worst of both worlds. They give people the illusion of privacy, which is why a lot of people look at porn at work, and it also makes it much more casual to walk in and engage in idle chit chat since you have no door to knock on or authenticate access to.
Cubicles are, however, a very good way to cheaply maximize space use because you don't have to build the walls, buy the doors and install the windows that are, well, kind of par for the course with having a bonafide office of your own.
Veal are forced into their cubicles, we choose to sit in these unnatural, life-negating gnome-holes. Any being that willfully chooses to spend a large portion of their life in one of these contraptions deserves their automaton fate.
...don't forget the - to me - absolutely precious term:
...naturally I mean the cube-farm-heads-popping-up kind, not the "I have to go to the rest room really bad" kind. Although the latter is mildly amusing too.
PRAIRIE DOGGING!
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
The tandem of tiny cubes and the paging system is enough to drive one to insanity. Nothing like finally slipping into the zone to get some real work done when everybody leaves for lunch when suddenly there is the blaring overhead, "Will the owner of a black jeep please come to the front desk? Your lights are on."
And suddenly I'm back to square one. I don't even think industrial strength ear plugs could block out most corporate paging systems.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
Without cubes, we never would have been given Dilbert, Office Space or User Friendly. Cubes aint all that bad!
The creators of these works are essentially profiting from helping us to relieve the stress and pain caused by bad work environments and policies.
Imagine what rewarding and fulfilling work they could do, if society had no need for them to expend their creative energies helping us to relieve the stress of working in cubicles.
Imagine what more we could all do, if we didn't have to relieve that stress in the first place!
Dilbert, Office Space, and User Friendly all make the best of a bad situation. I'd rather their creators never had a bad situation to make the best of, in the first place.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
It is, of course, entirely possible that the cost will be worth it, due to the incresed productivity, reduced stress, and general worker well being. It's just not as straight forward as it may appear.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
Prior to starting a second-career as a software engineer for a medium-sized defense contractor, I was an avionics technician in the USAF. My work areas were either windowless labs, aircraft hangars, or aircraft parking areas.
I'll take this cube in climate controlled building with big windows any day. I have more privacy and more comfort. Plus, my co-workers don't fart, spit, and discuss goose-hunting all freakin' day long.
Just my 2 cents.
What?
Some of the best jokes I know came out of the Soviet Union. Although, most of them aren't even that funny to someone who hasn't had a chance to live in the USSR.
As Heisenberg said, "There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them."
The question is, is the suffering worth it to you?
The collaborative power of people working on the same project sitting together is crap.
For every time it saves time for one person (in a (typical?) four-person bullpen to be able to call out a question to the others, there's exactly three times it distracts and breaks the flow of the others.
And that's purposeful interruptions; it's not even counting incidental distractions (phone calls, thinking-out-loud comments, etc.).
I've worked in both private offices and open environments, and I'm with Joel. Privacy and lack of interruption is key for developers.
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
To remedy this, I suggest corner window offices for all office employees.
I would be far happier in my cube if the walls went floor to ceiling, and there were real sound dampening materials in the walls. I can hold a conversation with the guy on the other side of the wall while speaking in a low voice. And I'm sick and tired of impromptu speaker-phone conference calls in the cube next to me.
I feel exactly the same way about bathroom stalls.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
The problem with bumper-sticker philosophy is that the idea expressed is usually too complex to be clearly communicated by a witty one-liner.
My sig is actually a dig at libertarianism, which, in a general way, holds that individuals can organize themselves in a community, without the need for "government".
My take is that the moment you start organizing a community, you end up with a system that performs essentially the same functions, in essentially the same way, as "government".
I also think that governments are actually incredible examples of organization on a large scale. Perhaps your perception of governments as disorganized comes from mistaking the bureaucratic overhead imposed on a huge, complex organization for disorganization. Or maybe it's that you perceive individual instances of human error (incompetence, corruption, etc.) and mistake them for evidence of system-wide, institutional disorganization. I honestly think that what you perceive as disorganized government is really just the annoying 10% of government that doesn't submit well to any attempt to organize it. The other 90% ends up running pretty smoothly.
Besides, my sig isn't comparing government to some ideal standard of organization, but rather (by implication) to some ideal standard of disorganization: an anarchic mob, ruled by the strongest, with no attempt made at stability.
And, finally, just because our government doesn't appear to be particularly well organized (a misperception on our part, I'm sure), that doesn't mean that a well-organized community would be functionally different from a well-organized government.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Gasp, maybe he's outside of the US?
With open-concept, I can't concentrate! I keep seeing things in my peripheral vision. I keep thinking somebody is staring at me. I feel like I am constantly in the spotlight. It would drive me mad I tell you.... MAD!!
Meh.
Dogbert: I plan to enslave the world. I will put everyone in small boxes and make them work there all day.
Dilbert: That's ridiculous. People would never stand for that. Now get out of my cubicle, I'm trying to get stuff done.
Dogbert: You mean your box.
I fully agree. One of the places where I worked had a cubicle farm, where nobody worked, and a central open area where the 3270's were located (that should tell you how long ago it was, if you can even remember 3270 terminals.)
That was where we were coding, reviewing stuff, learning off of each other, collaborating.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I have worked in a cubicle environment in the states and now work in an office in Nagoya, Japan. Here in Japan they almost always (at least at big companies) use rows and rows of desks, with three-four people next to each other.
I have been here 7 months now and I like this much, much more than those horrible american cubicles. And it didn't help that they were piping out white noise from the ceiling.
I can't really put a finger on why this open style doesn't bother me. My best idea is that the cubicles create some kind of worst-of-all-styles situation. You are completely isolated and alone but still have no privacy.
It really made me understand why mentally weak people are likely to go crazy at the work place. Have you noticed that that doesn't happen nearly as much in other countries where cubicles are less prevalent...
Die dulci fruere. Have a nice day.
One company I used to work for thought cubicles were great. I guess managers liked seeing their engineers all boxed up in rows like a barn full of laying hens.
Problem was I was productive in the lab, not in a cubicle. I didn't last long there.
Funny, managers want engineers with "people skills", then think that holing us up in an enclosure similar to a bathroom stall is going to encourage productivity?
There are not many things I can do in a cubicle-sized stall. Maybe testing efficacy of different laxatives, but thats about it.
I figured such insight probably is similar to one who sees a beautiful report coming from a printer, buys that printer, takes it to the office, sets it up, and expects more fine work to come from the slot on the side of the machine.... completely unaware that the printer was hooked to a computer at the showroom.
I know my parable looks ludicrous, but often appears to be the Occam's razor solution for what I observe.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]