Large Tech Companies Moving Beyond the Cubicle

statemachine writes in with a story from Silicon Valley about how Intel and Cisco, among other companies, are experimenting with cubeless, open, and unassigned seating. "Beginning this month, [Intel] will set up three experimental work sites. Open areas, comfortable armchairs, extra conference rooms and tables where people can plop down with laptops will replace the ubiquitous cubes that have been standard issue for decades. Each morning, Intel employees will log onto the corporate network using wireless connections. Their phone numbers will follow them. White boards that employees use to sketch out business plans and project strategies will be outfitted with electronics so drawings and plans can be transferred to laptops and e-mailed to colleagues. 'People feel much more comfortable coming up to me. It's more of a friendly atmosphere,' Cisco senior manager Ted Baumuller said. 'I hope I never have to go back to cubes.'"

Comments

What about personal things

[WetCat]

like books, personal items, photos, etc?

Re:What about personal things

[Professor_UNIX]

Irrelevant in the new economy. We need employees to be fluid and quick to react to any situation. When it comes time to lay them off they should be able to leave at a moment's notice with little to no trace that they ever existed at the company other than their e-mail account and storage space on the company file server which are being wiped as we speak. Turn in your badge and laptop and calmly wait for security to escort you off the premises.

Re:What about personal things

[tommasz]

Exactly. I've seen the "no assigned seating" idea applied to tech support people and they were all miserable. The rules included no personal effects allowed so many of them carried a floppy with pictures of their family that they would load into whatever computer they were assigned and display on the desktop or in a screensaver. I think there's something fundamental about having a space of your own, no matter how small or humble, and I wonder how long this will last before people start claiming a particular place.

Re:What about personal things

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't too hard to claim a personal spot in a situation like this. Just eat a lot "while working" and make sure the crumbs are all over the chair. Fart a lot into the seat cushion and make sure people hear it from time to time. Trust me, that spot is all yours...

Re:What about personal things

[BoomerSooner]

They did this when I worked at Andersen. It made sense there because hopefully you were out at client sites more than in the office. With a job where I go to the same place every day people will start to stake out their areas, not unlike seating in college.

For fun I used to move all around the room and sit in other peoples seats. They'd freak out at first but I'd actually talk about it, make friends (or enemies) and then move somewhere else. If the people weren't complete assholes (maybe 10% were pricks), the entire class would lighten up and become friends. I only had one class where that didn't happen. Ah, the think they're better looking and smarter than they are whores, how could I ever forget them ;)

It will become a turf war if these people aren't actually out of the office more than they are in it. One more worry people have to take on (assuming they're anal retentive, which seems to be almost all the engineers, programmers, etc. that I know).

Re:What about personal things

[jdray]

I started work for an energy company six months ago. I'm an IT guy, but sitting on the trading floor, "embedded" as it were. All the "cube" walls are waist high, and sitting in my chair I can see the entire length and breadth of the room. Furthermore, the workspaces are sixteen by eight, with one sixteen-foot side open. One person occupies each corner, but in a pinch you can stuff someone into the space between two people.

It took me about three weeks to get used to the new arrangement, completely different from the 66" high, eight by eight cubes I had at my last job. We've got a little space to hang personal goods; a little over a foot of wall protrudes above the desk surface, and you can set little things on the wall rim. After settling in, I found that I like this arrangement far better than I liked the other system. You can look at people while you're talking to them several cubes away without getting up, and you can keep an eye on your clients without leaning over their shoulders. It makes you more accessible to your clients too, which his good in my case, but that's not best for everyone.

I'm a very social person, and like interaction with people. That's not for everyone, and I'm probably a bit outside of the norm for my chosen profession. If I want some privacy, I put on my headphones and make the world disappear. The boss, who frequently walks up to check on the state of the world, doesn't care if we surf the web, so long as we don't abuse the privilege and get our work done (I can post this without staring over my shoulder). For the most part, my counterpart and I are left to our own devices so long as nothing goes haywire.

That's something that a lot of companies (for instance, the electric utility I left to take this job) would have a hard time with; the idea of leaving people to do what they do and not worry so much about work style. If you take down people's walls (literally), you have to make them feel like they're not exposed. The cultural shift has to start at the top, not at the cube wall.

Re:What about personal things

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a "War Room" now and its the worst idea ever conceived. Programming requires being able to quietly concentrate on your work, but the war room atmosphere is noisy and makes for a lousy enviromnent for the developer. Its all part of this FrAgile process... the next job I take will not be in such an environment.

Re:What about personal things

[coolGuyZak]

It all depends upon how competitive and proprietary the community is. The employees could:

• carve the space up into distinct personal areas, akin to the way we divide real estate,
• develop a squatters system, whereby you can take what's not being used,
• institute a fluid bucket system. Your personal stuff is in a bucket, each employee carries their bucket around.
• Say that there's no personal stuff allowed, everything is common.
• Create a series of devices that can be customized based upon a PAN. For instance, a bluetooth picture frame that can display a random or specific picture from your smartphone or laptop.
• a mixture of the above, there's a part that's personal, and a part that's common

And I'm sure there's tons of others. If I, as an employer, were to institute this system, I'd ensure that the employees had the flexibility to organize the space as they wanted. If I, as an employee, were to be part of this system, I'd design a tightly knit squad of nerf-enabled roombas to guard my personal space, and lead assaults on other employees during lunch hour.

Re:What about personal things

[badasscat]

It will be interesting to see how removing any sense of personal ownership in the office space works out for the companies that try this.

It's not really a new idea. Here's a still from Orson Welles' "The Trial" (yes, from the Kafka novel), and that was made in the 1960's. The only difference now is that there's *nothing* kept on the desk - in the old days, there was at least a typewriter. Over time, other objects appeared; in and out boxes, pencil holders, etc. And that's when the concept of "assigned desks" and the cubicle took over, out of a necessity for both better working conditions and more productive workers.

This is a regression backwards; there's nothing new about it, and it's not what workers want, that's for sure. Management loves it in theory because they can keep an eye on many employees at once. They know who is there, they know who is working and not just staring at the ceiling or throwing darts at their cube walls.

But employees hate it, and I know this from experience. My previous job didn't quite go so far as having empty desks where employees could sit anywhere, but we did have a completely open office without walls. What you invariably end up with is as many people crammed into a room as the employer can fit, because there are no boundaries telling anybody "this is enough space for one person". At my office, this was easy to do because the whole office was just a series of long metal tables pushed together, so when we hired somebody new, everybody just scrunched down a little more. And because nobody has any claim to any personal space, or any "ownership" of it, they end up throwing garbage everywhere and not ever cleaning it up. So it's cramped, crowded, smelly, and there's no privacy. It's like what you'd imagine working in an office in the Soviet Union was probably like. Or some sort of sweatshop.

Cisco probably hasn't gotten to that point yet, but I guarantee their employees already hate it. And eventually, it'll become intolerable and everybody will be clamoring for the days of cubes again.

This is just another example of somebody thinking they've stumbled onto a great idea, not thinking through the unintended consequences, and not realizing that countless other people have tried the same thing many times before, without success.

Re:What about personal things

[kevin_conaway]

You can look at people while you're talking to them several cubes away without getting up

And what about the the people occupying those cubes in between you and the person you're talking to?

Re:What about personal things

[Xichekolas]

As a dweller of cube land (and one of those people with no personal effects in my cube), I'd argue that the only reason people become defensive of 'their spot' (be it a cube or a chair in college) is because it is defined by a physical object or location. You remove the physical delimiter of 'my space' versus 'your space' ... and it's hard to fight over space. The same story has been done in a million TV shows. You have two characters that have to share a room, and they fight constantly. One of them has the brilliant idea to put a line down the middle, so each has one half. The moral of the show is that the line always makes it worse. Suddenly everyone is hypervigilant of the line. Remove the line, and no one notices if my stuff is three inches over it.

In college we had our regular table in the library, but if it was taken when we showed up, we had no problem sitting at another identical table nearby. I think people sit in the same seat in class out of habit, not because they fancy it 'their seat.'

I'm sure after a while people will fall into a routine in this open office environment, but I think the danger lies more in distraction than turf wars. You get a ton of people in an open room working together, and they are going to talk. I guess it depends on what kind of work they do, but I know as a lowly programmer, I can't think straight with people around me talking all day. At least for my job, I wish I had an office with a door AND a big common area. The office doesn't even have to be mine (or very big)... just something I can reserve for the day and shut the door to get some work done. The common area is absolutely necessary for team work. Ever try to work with people in cubes? I always feel like I'm invading their space and want to run away.

My company did this to send people home

[gelfling]

I was moved from a single office, with a door, to a double up office, to a cube farm in a call center with cube walls one foot higher than the desk. This was intolerable and clearly designed to get people to 'volunteer' to work from home. We still have a so called visitor center but unless you have ITN installed on your VoIP on your PC you don't have a portable phone number.

Re:My company did this to send people home

[value_added]

I was moved from a single office, with a door, to a double up office, to a cube farm in a call center with cube walls one foot higher than the desk.

Hope you got to keep that red stapler, at least.

Don't kid yourselves, it's all about costs

[cerberusss]

Open areas (...) will replace the ubiquitous cubes

Yes, great! And we will need less office space! Isn't it great!?

Don't kid yourselves, this is just about some PHB wanting to save on office space, cramming yet another dozen workers in the same space.

Re:Don't kid yourselves, it's all about costs

[mh1997]

this is just about some PHB wanting to save on office space, cramming yet another dozen workers in the same space.

I'd be willing to bet that it isn't about office space at all. If you are in an open area, it is harder to surf the internet, make personal calls, play games on your computer, or post to slashdot.

Re:Don't kid yourselves, it's all about costs

[Red Flayer]

Not just about better utilization of space. Also about better productivity. FTA:

Productivity also is up, said Larry Matarazzi, Cisco's senior director of workplace resources. Ted Baumuller, a senior manager in Cisco's information technology department, agrees. He said the time it takes to make decisions has been cut by 25 to 30 percent because it's easier to round up the team, and collegial relationships have improved by working in a more open environment.

It's a double win for mgmt. As stated in the article, they can redesign to have more conference rooms, they can add more staff to the same location -- and they also get productivity enhancement.

Still, I'm not sure why you view this so negatively, or have such bad feelings towards management. I've worked in open floor plans when my role was conducive to it (requiring lots of interaction, etc). Now my role is much more autonomous, and I really need uninterrupted time to get my time-sensitive work done (hence relishing office privacy and coming to work at 6 AM). My experience with unassigned floor plans was that I got more accomplished, and thus felt better about my work -- AND I enjoyed better relationships with my coworkers. The downside was inhibited ability to hunker down and cram out work -- this was solved by setting aside a portion of the office as a DND area. Except for real emergencies, DND was observed by everyone.

Re:Don't kid yourselves, it's all about costs

[Mikkeles]

'Productivity also is up, said Larry Matarazzi, ...'

I wonder how much of this is due to the Hawthorne Effect?

As a european from

[MemoryDragon]

central europa I personally think the cubicle system is nothing more than a sick joke.
The company I work for recently had to move offices because it was not conformant to working laws anymore, every person hat about 5 times the space a single cubicle has :-(

Over here normal offices with 2-3 people are the norm, cubicles would not even remotely adhere to the law, and when I see them I usually think on those chicken farms where chicken are in the boxes only to be in there to lay eggs.

Re:As a european from

[seven of five]

I guess that's proof that there's life on Europa.

Management != Techies

[AceJohnny]

So the senior manager is happy with the arrangement? Great. Guess what: that kind of guy deals with people all day long. It makes sense to make it easier for him to interact with people.
But not for me. I'm a hardcore techie. I spend days not interacting with people, fighting with the code, and I need my concentration. Every time I get interrupted, I need about 20 minutes to get back to work properly.
Yep, I'm in a cubicle. I hear everything that happens around me, and maybe I'm just not good enough to blank it out. I regularly have to reserve meeting rooms just to have a little peace and quiet to be able to think.

Yeah, I'm mad because my request for noise-isolating headphones was turned down. Does it show?

Re:Management != Techies

[sqrt(2)]

I don't mean to sound insulting or presumptuous, and I don't claim to know nearly enough about you or your work to make this claim with much accuracy, but perhaps you have adult ADD? I know someone who has it, and described nearly exactly what you said. They can't block out sound/visual input well and basically any sensory input not related to the task at hand, and once they get side tracked they have a hard time being able to regain focus.

Or it could just be simple boredom/frustration/fatigue with doing a task for long stretches of time.

What's stopping you from bringing your own noise canceling headphones?

Re:Management != Techies

[blincoln]

What's stopping you from bringing your own noise canceling headphones?

I have adult ADD, and work in a cube. It's a lose-lose scenario. I used to listen to music on headphones all of the time to keep from being distracted, and was told that it was giving everyone the impression that I didn't want to talk to them.
Of course, it's still better than some ridiculous open seating plan where I couldn't customize anything. I have three monitors at my desk that I scavenged when everyone else was getting rid of their CRTs. Being able to have so much simultaneously-visible working space is great for my concentration. I use it kind of like the display in Minority Report - moving various windows around depending on what makes sense for any given moment. I had to use a single screened laptop for 2-3 weeks when my PC died and it cut my productivity in half.

Bad idea

[Blue6]

makes it harder to read /. at work.

Now get back to work wage donkeys!

books and junk

[PetriBORG]

And where are they supposed to put their dozens of Unix/Windows and programming language books or other engineering books? Paperwork? Is this also supposed to be the magical land of the paperless office? I'm all for more open spaces - my team of programmers and I all go down to the lab every day and work next to each other instead of in our cubes, but we still have cubes to hold all that random paper junk. Pete

I see some sterile nerds in the near future.

[RandoX]

No desks? Laptops on for 8 hours? You do the math.

Re:I see some sterile nerds in the near future.

[GIL_Dude]

While that part may be true, the worst part is that notebooks on laps or on conference tables are not ergonomically correct and really cannot be made to be correct without a bunch of equipment lying around (for example external keyboard and mouse, silly looking device to hold the machine with the screen in the right position, etc.). The way we are setup at my company (80,000 machines) - notebook users are issued port replicators with real monitors, actual ergo keyboards, real ergo mice, etc. Everyone also gets some training on how to best setup in a hotel room for the limited ergonomics you can get there.

While this "big open environment with nice chairs and conference tables" sounds nice and all - it will HURT people. Wrist, arm, neck, and shoulder problems will follow this around like crazy.

Oh, and like others in the thread have said: The company requires me to keep certain paperwork and some few receipts. Where do I put those?

Backward Tech Companies

[PHPfanboy]

There are plenty of writings about this - Wired did a piece years ago about BBWA Chiat Day in the US, there's the famous management course Oticon case study and recently I just read a nice book by Ricardo Semler. Normally the open plan offices translate into qualitative benefits in the company (people are happier, more collaborative, less secretive etc...).

It's odd to read the comments here along the lines of "Send me back to the server room, I can't stand the lights....", but I guess there's no pleasing some people.

Re:Backward Tech Companies

[AaronLawrence]

Normally the open plan offices translate into qualitative benefits in the company (people are happier, more collaborative, less secretive etc...).

Oh really? And that applies to software development as well does it? And it means more productivity as well, right - of course many people are happy to sit in a big open office and chat all day, but do they get more work done?

Joel believes it's all rubbish and private offices are much more productive. Personally, I have seen exactly the same thing. When I started at my current job we all were in one room. It was very sociable and we all agreed on what to do ... for every. Single. Task. Amazingly our boss noticed this and deliberately gave us separate offices, and this seems a lot better. You can still go and chat to people, but you don't involve everyone just to talk to one guy, and when people need to concentrate they can.

Frankly, those studies are either not applicable or just missing the point.

Re:Backward Tech Companies

[CommandNotFound]

Also, didn't the early productivity studies regarding lighting show that productivity went because of the study itself? Wikipedia is down, so I can't link it, but if I recall, they changed the lighting, and productivity went up 15%. They changed the lighting back, and productivity still went up 15%. They determined that people worked harder because of the study.

So we get to implement Snow Crash's Office Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like the office plan from Snow Crash, where you weren't assigned a desk, and you demonstrated your loyalty by where you sat; determined by when you arrived in the morning.

Contrast that with Joel's Software, where each person gets his/her own office with a window, read what he says about it and how it improves productivity. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html

Perfect

[moosesocks]

Whenever I go to work, I typically sit thinking to myself for several minutes.... "How could this be made more like cheap air travel?

I am glad to see that Intel has now answered that call.

Not Exactly New

[jeffx]

Cisco's office in Atlanta had something very similar to this in 1999. I remember thinking it was a pretty cool way of using technology but not something I would want to work in. At the time I liked having little geek toys decorating my cube. It would have taking a long time to set up my toys again and again.

Who am I kidding, I still have little geek toys decorating my workspace.

Re:I'm lucky

[Rob T Firefly]

My work requires my test equipment (45kg) and its power module (20kg), a signal generator (20kg), a specter analyser (30kg), an oscilloscope (5kg), a lab power suply (5kg) and dozens of meters of various cabling What's it like being a Ghostbuster?

Won't somebody think of the chi^H^H^HH&S

[Half-pint HAL]

In the photo (in TFA) there's bad posture and trailing cables. How this got past health and safety I'll never know.

HAL.

Those who don't know history...

[line-bundle]

will be forced to repeat it.

Behold exhibit A, TBWA Chiat/Day.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/chiat.html

Re:nothing new about *that* economy...

[twistedsymphony]

Dom: So um, Milton has been let go?

Bob Slydell: Well just a second there, professor. We uh, we fixed the glitch. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it will just work itself out naturally.

Bob Porter: We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem solved from your end.

terrible terrible terrible

[dindi]

1. no personal items
Did I have photos in my cubicle ? No. but some people do. They have plants, action hero figures... etc etc. I personally only had specially crafted documents (crap no one else understands), but I know how deep people get hurt every time they moved them.

2. YES personal items.
No, I do not mean photos. I mean coffee stains, skin particles, food grease, saliva, boogers, pubic hair. No I am not a health/cleaning freak at all, but these are the personal items you ALWAYS find at someone else's desk/area.

3. My chi
I am sorry, but sitting at a different place disturbs my concentration, provides new distractions, and it takes time to learn to learn how to lock out that annoying new neighbor who chats to the wife screaming on the phone.

4. Special devices
Unless you are that uniform person who works with the standard given crap you are in trouble. Do I need a 22" to program code?
Well, not necessarily (even though at home I have one, so more text fits on it), but at work the standard 17" will do.
Then what? Oh well, I hate mice, and being a rather tall individual I cannot stand regular keyboards - too tight. Besides knowing how crappy the the keyboards and mice were the last Fortune 10 gave to the employees, even if I was ok with mice and regular keyboards I would differ to use any given one.
Pickiness? Well, when you spend 10+ hours at a computer (did I say 16+ ? ), and I am sure a lot of guys here do, you want the best input devices. I personally only work with a Logi trackman and any (non-cheap-o) split keyboard : MS, Fellowes are OK, without these I suffer after a few hours of working.

But then again I am a sociopath and quit a good job because I hated cubicle life so much, and I love to work bare-feet, underwear with my dogs sleeping next to me....

Anyway, this kind of workplace sharing is completely incompatible with me. I program and sysadmin, and while "sysadmining" tolerates socializing and noise at times of maintenance/support, programming needs dead silence and no changing environment for me. So does systems engineering, or even installing an unknown feature into an environment (e.g. reading docs, and try until it works kinda stuff).

Put it into any coating, it comes back to saving money to these corporations. It has nothing to do with you being well changing workstations.

Just my 2c.

damn I would do anything, even write a book on /. to avoid finishing that project I am late with :(

Re:terrible terrible terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean coffee stains, skin particles, food grease, saliva, boogers, pubic hair.

I'm intrigued about your work environment

Re:This is not new

[everphilski]

Cubicles are isolated and depressing. Embrace the european style.

No thanks. I have 10'x10' space that is all my own, desks on three sides of it, a 4 shelf bookshelf, room for a mini fridge and I can put whatever I want on the walls short of nude pictures. My cube is practically a study. No way i'd give it up except for a larger cubicle or office (which is a cubicle with a door)

Scorpio

[halcyon1234]

Relax, Homer. At Globex, we don't believe in walls.

Just been planning our own office layout...

[Mirz]

Just been on the other side of this decision: planning our own office layout for our new office. We're currently in the big open plan space (no cubes) setup and the noise is deafening at times. You can just see people's heads swivel as soon as an interesting argument/discussion breaks out on the other side of the room. Of course, as many have said they then need ages to get back in the zone.

Cubes seemed too horrible to us and private offices seemed a bit lonely and isolated.

What we went for in the end was a set of 3-6 person rooms, some of which can be combined if required. The idea was to merge the benefits of each approach - you get a dedicated "project room" where ad-hoc conversations, whiteboad design discussions, etc. are encouraged. The team gets to personalise their space, as does each of the workers (for at least as long as the project lasts).

On the other hand if a team is in deadline mode, they can shut the door and agree between each other to be quiet. Similarly if a team wants to play music they don't disturb others, etc.

We'll see how it works out... Anyone else tried this sort of approach?

Depends on your job

[Avatar8]

I see this working for groups where collaboration is important, but where privacy or quiet is needed these areas are a major disruption. Everyone here is reacting differently, but not everyone is saying what it is they do for a job.

Jobs that are conducive to this environment:
- marketing
- pre-sales engineers
- artists (graphical, musical, etc.)
- people managers
- sales people (maybe). Depends if they are usually out in the field or taking calls from customers.

Jobs that should be conducive to this environment but the workers wouldn't enjoy it:
- human resources: easily accessible, able to really keep a pulse on morale but a constant need for privacy.
- desktop support: easily accessible, immediately aware of issues but unable to get proactive work done.

Jobs that absolutely cannot work in this environment:
- developer: needs absence of interruptions and quiet for concentration.
- security: no one should be able to peek at security information whether physical or logical.
- sysadmin: same as security plus during a failure the accessability and interruptions would be detrimental.
- accounting/payroll: security concerns as well as customer privacy issues.

I could see a hybrid environment working well - a handful of cubes and offices and 75% of the space as described above. Once you get past the job descriptions, then you must consider whether or not it's conducive for the company's industry. At Cisco and Intel where you have a high percentage of "idea" people and sales people, it works. I'm quite certain the engineers, IT and some back office functions will not and cannot be part of this experiment.

But what about the view?

[AnomaliesAndrew]

I'm a programmer stashed away in an exposed set of 8 cubicals, in what amounts to a closet of a closet, at the farthest end of our building, where I'm bathed in a gazillion watts of fluorescent lighting.

I have to walk a hundred paces just to see the outside. If there was no seating assignment, I'd at least have a chance to get my fair share of natural light -- especially in the winter months when the only daylight I see is on the drive to work.

When it comes to personal effects, programmers (at leas the ones I work with) don't really seem to exhibit anything they're too attached to. And with personal laptops, you can keep some mementos stashed there.

I'd have to give up my plants, and my facetious posters, but it would be well worth it to work in the presence of natural light at least some of the day, instead of these cold buzzing demon tubes that seem to have just the right color temperature to make my eyes feel strained and my head ache. And if you gave me ample facilities and the freedom to use them whenever, I'd probably find being in the office a bit more tolerable.

It may not do anything for my productivity, but it might keep me around longer.

Of course, giving me a private office in the front of the building would probably achieve the best of both worlds, from my perspective.

Context Switching

[zifn4b]

No - I think the main point here is for very technical jobs, the employees are required to load up a large amount of information into their mind to solve large, complex problems. Anytime a person comes into their space to ask them about something unrelated this causes a context switch in the employee. They have to unload some or all of the information for the task they are currently working on to contemplate the topic that person who interrupted them wants to talk about. Once the interruptor has left, then the employee has to figure out "where they were at" which is essentially re-loading all the information needed to perform the task they were working into their mind.

Having a cubicle or an office at least establishes the notion of a boundary. In an open area, there are no boundaries and that typically makes other employees feel as though they can interrupt you for any reason at any time. The employee then becomes less productive due to the increased context switching.

Personally, I think for highly technical jobs that do not lend themselves well to multitasking, an office or telecommuting is best. You can lock your door, put your phone on DnD if you're working on a deadline sensitive task that you can't afford to be interrupted from.