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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."
My cubicles walls help give me more free time to spend on Slashdot... And, that's Stuff that Matters...
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/
Without cubes, we never would have been given Dilbert, Office Space or User Friendly. Cubes aint all that bad!
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Cubicles are Cubs Fans who sit in their ice-cold stadium
tell me you all aren't pumped full of donuts, chained to the desk, allowed to get big and fat, and then sold for slaughter right before the holidays....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
To remedy this, I suggest corner window offices for all office employees.
I don't get it.
We just move to icosahedronicles.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Unlikely, since he's been dead for several years.
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!
... theorized that productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them ...
What if your work is in front of you, behind you, on both sides of you, and even hanging above you like a 100-ton anvil? Some cubicles are death traps waiting to happen. Especially if you got a Star Trek nut in a cube.
Unfortunately, stating that it was a bad idea decades after the fact does nothing for the poor beings trapped in these small cages.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to goofy off properly with people walking by?
It bothers me even when I actually doing work.
And here comes someone now.....
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
He IS in a box. RTFA.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
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.
Some of the other articles speak about that he still likes the cubicles. What he objects to, is small cubicles. When he designed it, they were about the size of a standard office. Now, they are about 1/6 to 1/8 of the size of an office. Big difference.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I tend to agree, although don't forget that cubicles are a huge imporvement over rows and rows of desks with zero privacy whatsoever. Personally, I'd rather have an office, or at least a cubicle-sized space with a door I can close. It's very distracting for some people to hear everyone's phone conversations, music choices, etc. When I work on a problem, I tend to go lock myself in a lab or some other closed space so I can have "alone time" and carefully consider things.
:-)
It wouldn't be hard at all to give current cubicles full-sized walls and doors. I think it would greatly improve productivity. Think of how many times you've had to listen to people talking two feet away from you while you're trying to concentrate.
One of the main barriers to adoption is the fact that you can't oversee your staff like you can in a cubicle farm or open office. But then again, if you have to constantly watch them, do you really want them as employees?
...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.
I worked on design of the cubicle. The original idea had us placing workers inside transparent spheres, but testing revealed some office environments devolved into crazy pinball machines or a bumper car ride from hell. Our second revision merely squared off the spheres and lowered the height for visibility. There was no long-term view to our design. We were just trying to meet a deadline.
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.
If you read TFA, you'll see that Probst, the inventor of the cubicle, died in 2000. It was actually before then that he realized that cubicles were a mistake...
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
I don't think it's practical to give everyone a corner office, but everyone _could_ have a window.
In Peopleware, Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister observe that work better in offices with windows. When this is pointed out, management usually says "sure, but it's impossible to give everyone a room with a window."
DeMarco and Lister's reply is that in fact every hotel in the world manages to do this.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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?
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
Check out the article here by Kathy Sierra (of Head First fame). She quotes neuroscientist Elizabeth Gould of Princeton saying "complex surroundings create a complex brain". Basically, a monotonous environment causes the brain to stop producing new neurons. For years, it was thought that we were born with all the neurons we would ever have, largely because all studies of primate brains involved keeping the monkeys in cages -- an environment that inhibits neuron formation and growth! Now research shows that a stimulating environment fosters neuron formation and reduces brain stress. Time to bust out the electric screwdriver!
Just junk food for thought...
In my office, one guy used cardboard to increase the height of his cube walls. We almost put in a masking tape / Les Nesman 4th wall and door for him, but he got moved to an office because he whined so much. Which led to everyone whining.
I did something similar to keep my chatty neighbor from driving me nuts. I started by putting up a huge whiteboard so it stuck an extra foot above the cube wall. Then he couldn't Kilroy over the wall and chat. Then I put two extra desktop machines at the end of my desk to keep him from sitting on my desk to chat. As bonuses, it blocked the view a bit more and the extra white noise drowned him out. Then I had to put an old monitor and desktop on the floor behind my chair so there was nowhere left to stand in my cube to chat. My cube looks like something from Sanford-n-Son, but it keeps people away.
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 still dont understand why companies dont like telecommuting.
In the modern world of email, instant-messaging as well as things like VOIP/voice chat and video confrencing, there is no reason that you couldnt have, say, developers working from home.
No need to spend money even on cubes or open-plan office space.
Have meeting rooms for those times when a face-to-face meeting is the only way to get things done and other alternatives wont work.
Management can see how much work is being done by looking at how much code employees commit to the reository. Or by looking at how many of their assigned bugs or features or tasks they complete and sign off on (including how long it takes them to do each one).
Advantages of working from home as I see it:
1.No need to commute to work (saves money and time as well as saving the environment)
2.Saves the company money in that they dont need to spend as much on cubes/offices/space, electricity etc etc etc.
3.Allows workers to work a little more flexibly (in that as long as they are working the right number of hours, they dont necessarily need to be 9-5 mon-fri). Want to go to the movies? Work late other nights that week and take friday afternoon off.
Living with school-age kids? Start work when they are off at school, work through until they come home, then do stuff with the kids until bed-time and spend a couple hours working after the kids are in bed to make up for the hours you didnt work in the afternoon.
Need to go to the bank to sort something out? Go to the bank and make up the work later that day.
4.Allows workers to work in what they might consider a better environment (Want to have your music playing? No problems. Dont want to wear a tie? No problems.)