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America's Cubicles Are Shrinking
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.'"
"Younger workers' lives are all integrated, not segregated," says Larry Rivard. "They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever."
Could that be because their office space has become so worthless that anywhere else is preferable?
F0 07 C7 C8
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.
I'll be in the basement, clutching my red stapler.
Now you're veal.
"Younger workers' lives are all integrated, not segregated," says Larry Rivard. "They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever."
Maybe I'm an ergonomics nut (I always insist on a proper chair and desk, plus a good monitor height), but do these younger workers expect to make it until their retirement?
Working just anywhere is very destructive to your body, unless you pay sufficient attention to ergonomics.
In the USA, office employees are kept in a sort of shoe-box with a size that, for understandable reasons, is measured in feet. Those boxes have shrunk.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
And what about working from home when possible. I think EVERYONE can benefits from this... even mother earth!
When it's just you and your PC, you really don't need a whole lot of space. 7x7 feet seems about right for a comfortable cubicle.
These days many workers don't even have desktop PCs anymore. Everything is done on laptops via wifi. The only static device in the cube is the large monitor which attaches as a second screen to the laptop.
From another perspective, even these cubicles are unnecessary since you could put out a few couches and the employees will work with the laptops from just about anywhere they want. The freedom this provides is important and helps to foster creativity and a lively work atmosphere.
Doors and real offices are certainly necessary for some types of workers. Managers need offices to focus on their planning, so a true office is a must. However, given that a private room can usually be prepared for everyone's usage, the rank and file can usually get their private time taken care of in a shared room.
I'm not surprised by this development at all. It makes a lot of sense to maximize the space, and given how so many employees are versatile and can work from anywhere, it doesn't make sense to waste a lot of room building offices that they can't effectively use.
"With all those big CRT monitors replaced by thin LCD ones, employee have too much space. Let's reduce that cubicle a bit"
Next they'll expect us to share a desk too:
http://movieclips.com/Mkivg-brazil-movie-the-moving-desk/
I'm sitting in about 64 ft^2. It sucks but I like making money too.
So let them work at home, if they're used to working anywhere, why not?
PS are the younger generation of C*O's going to get smaller offices too, because they'll be used to working anywhere too.
With nightmarish escrow (yes commercial real estate has this now too) and little ROI for Wall Street why invest in more buildings?
http://saveie6.com/
Our freaking cubes are so tight (less than 100 square feet) and small that simply talking on the phone is a total pain. There's a guy in the cube next to me who always has to use his speaker phone for EVERY call. I can't even hear myself think when he's on the phone.
That alone should be reason enough to not support cubicles.
You can have huge desks where everyone get together if you want to save space. Alternatively, allow your employees to work a few days per week on their homes.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
This is America. Cubes aren't shrinking, workers are getting larger.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
My personal office space is 36 square feet; I am lucky enough to have a window along one edge. I spend most of my working life with a headset on to shut out the interference to my concentration from my near neighbours, four of whom I could hit with a baseball bat (quite cheerfully, as it happens) without leaving my chair. Welcome to the world of being an IT Architect.
7x3x4 feet... you do the math... you won't - its 80 something sq feet... =/
I've had this idea for a while - why not exploit the third dimension. Bunk desks - they're the answer!
Seriously, here in the UK open plan offices are the norm. We've recently escaped plans to reduce the size of our desks to little more than the width of keyboard + mousemat.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
maybe it's the occupants getting larger.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I just checked mine and it's 6' x 7'.
OMG, 42!
it all makes sense now!
I am new to this whole work world thing. I write for the most part. My problem with cubicles is this: at times all my co-workers in the cubicles around are making sales calls, or discussing web dev stuff, or just hamming it up, and I find it extremely hard to concentrate. It may just be that I am new to the game, but it does get a bit frustrating.
In most areas, commercial real estate is going empty.
This is being driven by a desire to control employees. They want to huddle them close together so they are easier to watch and they tend to police each other.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I have no need to even be at the office. I can work remotely just fine. Gone are the days of piles of paper and shelves of reference books. I never have to file away physical files. Most of my communications with my coworkers is via instant messaging and email. For reference i am a software engineer. I am currently working on convincing my company to let me work from the road in my RV.
hate it. Had an office and when I really needed to concentrate I could close the door. Then they said they needed the office space so moved me into my lab. Fine, I spent a lot of time there anyway and I could ignore the sound of the equipment running. Now there are three (3) cubes in my lab space, I'm in one. The space in each is only 44 sq ft. But at least the partitions are 6 foot tall; so, I can pretend to concentrate. In 4 month we're moving into a new building, with cubes. And the partition walls are 4 foot tall.
So, the point of the rant is, How in Hell do you expect me to concentrate on my work with no opportunity for peace and quiet?
Who's running these corporations? Millipedes?
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.
Then in 2025, everyone's cubicles will be two square feet! In 2035, it'll be negative 10 square feet! Zager and Evans will have NOTHING on this!
Sorry, I'm just enjoying the silly extrapolation.
The copious amounts of space top level executives in the USA take up has grown exponentially in the last 30 years. It is estimated that in the next 10 years they will need infinite space to just barely function. "I need more space than a third world factory just for my golf stuff. I have no idea where I'll put all my awards and toys. I'm really super worried about this." One Fortune 500 CEO is quoted as saying.
I guess it's somewhat related to Moore's law... As the tools we work with get a greater capacity in a small space, so do we.
Y'know when I was younger I would have worked on a shelf if it meant I had a job and I was doing something I loved, I don't see this as anything new.
I really can't think of any cube environment I've worked in that was conducive to work, the best environments always seem to have been open, yet not too big. An open room with 6 to 8 people seems to be the magic zone.
The biggest cube I worked in was at the Provincial Gov't, they had this massive 1960s job that had two chairs, a proper desk, a fully adjustable "computer" desk and a coat rack. I kinda liked that cube because there was enough room for small meetings, pair programming and it gave you some space for thinking (without having three other noisy people two meters away from you all the time). In fact it wasn't until I got into a modern cube farm that I had to go out and buy noise cancelling headphones (though very nearly a noise cancelling shotgun).
It's weird, with walls people are loud and obnoxious, with no walls they have respect for each other.
crazy dynamite monkey
Issue everyone a laptop and phone with a camera and a Jabra. Let them work where they want. Measure by task and project completion and quality. How much physical interaction is necessary for most information jobs?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
For some reason I am reminded of that ISS living quarters tour.
"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."
We got a regular Einstein over here.
... that you give them. And if they don't work there, they get fired.....
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Where I work has disbanded cubes altogether for one large noisy area. There is always bad music playing or people talking or some other distraction. I now work from home. My commit rate is 10x the other three programmers combined, my defect list on that code is proportionately less as well.
This has no context until you understand that my commit rate and defect rates were comparable to everyone else when I was working in the office ... the huge improvement is correlated to when I started working from home. The only other person that gets anything accomplished is the project manager, surprise he has an office.
I think the reason for cubicle shrinkage has more to do with how irrelevant desk space has become over the past 30 or 40 years. Everyone works off of computers and doesn't need a large amount of desk space - at least not as large as they had in the past. I have very little on my desk, mostly personal items (pictures, cell phone, MP3 player, etc.). 30 years ago desks would have to accomodate stacks of paper and notepads, and they would also need the ability to spread these items out.
Office space is money. One issue with business is that money is wasted on real estate instead of filling core objectives, such as providing quality products. Instead profits have to be jacked up to pay for real estate, which means less ability to compete with more agile firms. I never had an office of 500 square feet. Maybe that is because I have tended to work for small competitive firms, rather than large in efficient corporations. And just to head off the wasteful government kick, the people I know in government have cubicle that are around 50 square feet.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I am happy that some people can work sharing a table with a bunch of other people. But I never could -- when working as a software architect I needed to keep the door closed to maintain the quiet I needed to focus. But thats me. In reading this, I am curious about two things -- one, does anyone correlate the workspace and degree of voluntary isolation with their productivity? And two, are the executive offices shrinking by the same amount? Guess everyone should be grateful that they are not yet chained to their keyboards and phones for their work period.
I feel like I'm in the shrinking trash compactor in Star Wars...
After all, why not stack? and if we put a conveyor belt arrangement under your cage/cubicle, you don't have to leave for the restroom. Aha! more productivity.
Let's see, if this really is more productive then let's put all the executives in cubicles too. The CEO and CFO and COO can all share a wall so they're near each other. The VP's can have the half-wall cubes next to their department heads.
Bastards.
Just kidding of course... but really take our space for granted. I live on an acre and a half outside Chicago... and honestly, I hate that we have so much space that we don't even have decent public transportation outside the cities. I have to drive 15 miles to get to the train station to head down town, and outside of that public transportation in the states is simply archaic compared to most other countries.
Perhaps we don't "need more space". Do cubicles suck? Yeah they do... but, if you wanted enough space to fit every modern day employee in a 500 - 700 sq ft apartment, you'd better be okay with them cutting out a pretty large chunk of your pay check because that would be costly.
In a perfect world, everybody would telecommute and then drop by the office once or twice a week to ensure the company's atmosphere is cohesive, etc. The solution isn't to try and get everybody a bigger office.
Heck, I'm okay with working in 10 sq feet at Starbucks as much as possible... what people need isn't more space, but something that draws them away from the fact that cubicles are representative of our contained, lackluster lifes.
To a certain degree, I guess this probably makes sense.
A few years back you'd be working with physical paper. You needed room for filing cabinets. You needed a big enough desk to get work done. You needed paper, pencils, pens, a typewriter, whatever.
These days you've got a computer. You just need room for a monitor and keyboard, and you can cram the box itself under the desk somewhere.
But I think the bigger picture is that employers are genuinely squeezing as much out of their employees as they can.
We're expected to be productive every single minute that we're in the office. Any kind of downtime is frowned-upon. Vacation time is hard to come by. And now some companies are hiring PIs to make sure employees calling in sick are actually sick. Folks get work-related email virtually 24/7 on their smartphones. Folks plug into a VPN and work from home routinely. Folks are expected to work long hours.
And now they're cramming more people into smaller physical spaces.
Anything they can do to get more productivity out of fewer people for less money.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Thankfully, I have an office (and an officemate, but he's cool) now but I have done the cubicle sea thing in the past. I realize the apparent economy of cubicles, but the loss of productivity must be staggering. If I'm deep in the middle of a firewall hack, or trying to configure a router without bringing the entire company down, I *really* need to be able to concentrate. I know my productivity suffers greatly. I found myself working off-hours just to avoid having to listen to the idiot two rows over yap with his bookie or frat brother or whatever he was doing. This also probably impacted productivity, because my hours then overlapped less with the rest of the company.
And, to those of you who can screen out the world with headphones: I envy you. Maybe it's a by-product of being a musician, but even if I put classical music on, it's distracting because I actually find myself listening to it. The noise canceling headsets make me feel like my head is full of cotton.
I'm surprised that more companies aren't going to an essentially all telecommuting workforce, with a limited number of shared workspaces for those who may be in the office at any particular time.
When our cubicles were "refactored" into much smaller units we were told that it was a "feature" to help us be productive. No more having to "stretch" across the cubical to get papers, etc. The thing was, if they just told us that they wanted to cram more of us in the same space we would have been fine with it, but spinning it just insulted us.
I need to concentrate. My requests at work for a small pocket universe have gone unanswered, sadly.
LOL! Thanks, that really cracked me up. Now, here's an alternative translation for us wacky metric system users:
I'd be fine with space even half of what I have. Just give me full-height walls and a door. Thanks.
I'm fine with being in a small space. I just need a desk for my laptop and a phone, plus a place to stash my bag and coat. But for the love of god, give me some privacy and quiet. I need to be able to talk on the phone with some privacy. I need to be able to think without putting on headphones. Bottom line, if you want me to come to work rather than work at home... you need to make it not be worse than working at home in every possible way. I have a toddler and an infant at home, so one would think I would do anything to leave. Yet at the office I have two coworkers constantly talking to each other, others loudly talking on the phone, the temperature is ridiculously variant to the point that I have an extra coat in my cube and always wear layers, the cafeteria food is awful and oddly more expensive than fast food... plus I have to drive 15 minutes each way (an easy commute) to have the privilege. If you want me to commute, make it worth it. As it is I do anything I can to avoid going to the office because I am _far more productive at home_. Make the office awesome for getting work done, or bail on the concept entirely. This "how little can we get away with" mentality is a waste of money and time for everyone.
You Asperger cases who love open floor plans and cramped work spaces haven't read Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister's Peopleware, have you? You probably hate Joel Spolsky too. Go pick your noses and giggle somewhere else. Give me some space to concentrate and think about my work.
if I could I would.
We think: "Ooh, can I get a sexy flat screen to replace my ugly CRT?"
They think: "Let's make the desks 12 inches thinner and pack 'em in. Also, they can't stack so many furry toys and knick-knacks on them. Management fist-bump!"
Well lets think about it, 15 years ago, work generally involved 15 stacks of paper, the ability to spread them out and work on them individually. Now if you are important, work generally involves 2 17 inch monitors and a keyboard. I'm sure 1/4th of it has to do with our decreasing value as humans, and increase of real estate price, but it also has to do with the fact that at our current rate of progress in another 15 years we're going to be fully capable of doing our jobs on something the size of a celphone.
Being one of these "younger" workers I think the article is referring to, I can definitely relate. I don't enjoy working in a solitary office, find that having a colleague in close proximity helps me out when I'm stuck, etc... I recently had a 10m^2 office, shared with one other researcher, and I definitely miss it. My wife has the ability to have a decent sized office with a window view, but she prefers to share a 50% bigger office with a second colleague. They get more done that way.
Of course, others would prefer anything but, and I respect that, too, but this isn't necessarily as Orwellian a quote as that.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
The reason many cite working at the kitchen table likely has to do with two factors: comfort and space. There's a certain familiarity one has with one's own kitchen, and the kitchen table (and/or countertops and/or islands) provide additional space to spread things out. Sure, companies might save some bucks by shrinking workspaces, but such an approach is a one-size-fits-all solution. It's a lot easier for someone accustomed to little space to adjust to having more, than it is for someone who had more trying to adjust to having less.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
And WTF does "PC Load Letter" mean???
people are not chickens, (or prey as we large predators refer to chickens)
And it's cold outside so naturally the boys kinda wanna... *squints* OH! Cubicles... Sorry, misread the heading, my bad.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
I'm technically "on call" 1 week out of 4. In reality, management expects me to be available to fix any emergency at any of our sites (they're world-wide) at any time.
Many times I have worked from a kitchen table at 1am.
In my first three jobs out of college, I worked with real engineers in engineering departments. The facilities were a very large hall full of desks and filing cabinets. My "space" was my desk and room to wheel my chair around...maybe 25 square feet.
I don't remember this being a problem.
My first private office was nice, but I always missed mumbling a question to myself and getting two or three answers from the people around me. Getting to eavesdrop on conversations between the more senior guys was part of my education.
Maybe a move back in that direction is a good thing.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Job satisfaction among workers chained to their oars is notoriously low, especially when middle-management has to unchain a whole ROW just to let ONE GUY IN THE MIDDLE exercise his or her alleged God-given right to a potty break. Fortunately, there's Feegleman's Law: Cubicles get smaller until all you have left is big brains in small jars.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
I currently work in an open-plan environment. My job requires some significant coding work (requiring total focus for long periods of time) while all of my colleagues are involved in much more piecemeal work. They have absolutely no comprehension of how frustrating and damaging it is to my productivity to be subjected to their distracted working pattern all day.
There are definite benefits to working open-plan, but for some tasks it is simply inappropriate and detrimental.
Meta will eat itself
I like the japanese approach. They have wide open office spaces, no walls, even for the VIPs...
So why do we keep kicking the dead horse?
Pretty soon your coffin will be larger than your cube.. Have fun.
My 64sqft offers a modicum of privacy when I am on the phone, and insulates me from others phone calls, and conversations.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
You used to need a three foot deep desk because of having a two foot deep monitor - now that desk can be two foot deep (or less! Shaped curved-front desks have a fatter area for the monitor and phone (if you get a phone these days)). You don't need a bookcase of folders and books, so that saves a foot or so as well.
I work in a shared office without cubicles, right now there's three people in an 18' by 12' space I guess, so we've got 72 sq ft each (and a window each). There were four people before, it's not cramped though because our needs have changed.
But it doesn't sort out the noise and privacy issues, so we all run off into a meeting room when we get a phone call. Interruptions do affect getting into the 'zone' too, so productivity does go down.
Working from home today though, hurrah. Not that I've done much.
"... have shrunk from an average of 64 feet to 49 feet ..."
Poor 1-dimensional white-collar worker!
"American corporations typically thought they needed 500 to 700 square feet per employee to build an effective office"
I call shenanigans on this one, many one bedroom apartments are that big, maybe they compare apple with oranges, offices for senior executives with cubicles for lower employees.
Let me tell you, 700 sq feet is huge for an office.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
49 feet seems quite big for a cubicle. But what's the other horizontal dimension?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I've done much of my work in an airplane seat. Even First Class was less than 10sq.ft. Of course, today in coach it is closer to 4sq.ft. SV companies have been offering 'virtual' offices since the 90s. 'Virtual' as in virtually nothing.
The ultimate minimalism is no office with no employee, hence no overhead. Amazon did that to the retail store front. Perhaps we can do that to Congress. Just have a web server with a list of bills, written by lobbyists, to have the representatives' constituents vote online. Face it, we couldn't screw it up any worse than they have done.
I ask, because the other day some of our corporate overlords visited my site and one said to the other, as they were walking by the door to my office, "and you'll notice this is the only site company-wide where everyone has a separate office, and we think that's why their productivity is so high" along with some other stuff. It's true: we do have very high productivity, and I think a chunk of that is being able to close the door when it's crunch time, play loud music, and not have interruptions.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
"Younger workers' lives are all integrated, not segregated," says Larry Rivard. "They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever."
I mean just look at Milton...he was in storage and didn't seem to care.
Vinaka Jo
But when times turn good again (6 years? 8 years?) folks are going to hop for stuff like this.
They say the economy has recovered. It ain't getting any better really, except for the fat cats on Wall Street. The Dow went up.
This is the new normal. The recovery as left behind the American people, the bus has left and we're NOT on it!
Worse working conditions, less benefits, and that is if you are one of the increasingly fewer people who haven't been laid off.
Yahoo laid off 4% of its workers just now.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You know, it's pretty sucky to bitch about the size of your work space when so many people would love to have a job to bitch about.
They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever
Translation: Get used to less. There is no more American dream for you. There is soon to be 7 Billion people on this earth. Get used to fighting like a dog for scraps. If you don't like it, we have a work-camp to send you to.
Live Free or Die!
What's changed is that a generation of consultants have grown fat on telling senior management what they want to hear - that we have changed, and that they can get the same productivity by squeezing us into smaller boxes. And if productivity drops, heck, bring in a new bunch of consultants to sell you Six-Sigma.
I'd be working right now, but there are three conversations going on within earshot, only one of which is work related.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I worked at a large company and there's three types of cubical layouts. Older style, new style and none.
Older Style: these were the original cubical designs, which were about 12ft long and probably about 6ft deep.
These are being replaced by:
New Style: They basically took the older style cubicles and cut out 1/3 of the space.
These are being replaced by:
None: This is an open floor plan with flat tables with power outlets and IP phones. There are small one person rooms on the fringe of the floor if you need to take a personal call or be on speakerphone. There's no walls between the tables separating your desk from someone elses. Also, the work spaces are not assigned, first come first served.
The reasoning: It's all about not having to build/buy more buildings so you either cram more people into smaller spaces or put them into an environment whereby they share work spaces or determine on their own that it's more comfortable to work from home. Since VPN access is cheaper than providing power/cooling/lighting/network/phone for an office/cubical occupant.
... conference rooms (you'll be needing more of these once everyone needs one to brainstorm with a few cow-orkers), common areas, exercise facilities and locker rooms, and general "architectural space" (your company has got to look 'cool' to attract employees/customers). Now what does your square foot per employee figure look like?
Have gnu, will travel.
Cubicle!?!
Right.
When I was a lad I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day in a MILK CRATE, and pay my overlords for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
I, along with many other Slashdotters, am employed as a software developer. The ONLY permissible work space is an office with a door. Failing that, allow us to work from home.
Yes, I do need to communicate with other people to get my job done. However, I also often need to concentrate for an uninterrupted block of time. The only way to accomplish this is to shut people out of my workspace.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
One of the things I found interesting in the 60 Minutes "Facebook" segment last week was the Facebook offices. Not only did Zuckerberg appear to not have an office, he didn't even have a cube. He just seemed to have a desk / table in the middle of a big open area full of other people at tables. His "head of development" (their CTO, I guess) was on another desk/table backed onto Zuckerberg's. When they showed the developers they were all seated side-by-side on long narrow tables - Row upon row. Again, no offices, and no cubes. I guess if your staff is all under 25 and comes from a LAN Party / University lab culture it seems perfectly normal, but man I sure wouldn't want to work there...
When I started my first 'real' job in the mid-70s, I was a bench tech. Three of us in a room, all benches facing the wall, but we heckled each other constantly. Bliss for 7 years...
Then I 'hit the road' as a field tech for a total of 22 years with 4 years in between serving one or two clients and getting a desk or cubicle. On the road, your car is your cubicle.
The desk assignment actually was 9 months at a rack in the datacenter, with the keyboard about 45" off the floor. This results in impingement syndrome, and I do not recommend it. Ergonomics forced my client to provide a desk and chair. Too late, but it was in a room that was actually the passageway to the telecom tech's office. I got so I could ignore the traffic. The telecom guy never could walk by without taking a good look at my screen. Whatever. He learned IP routing and NetWare administration by eavesdropping, which is to say not very well at all. Another assignment was in a cubicle for 4 people about 12'x12'. Not bad, but I was the unwelcome NetWare guy, trying to keep the stuff alive until the NMCI could replace it. They still haven't.
Having landed a real desk job, I'm in a 2-man cubicle with an open wall, 6'x10'. I can adjust my desk surface at least. If I get a full-timer's cube here, it will be 6'x8'.
We have five different types of work spaces, not counting various meeting and conference room layouts. Some are intended to be used by groups, some are touchdown spots for people who don't work full-time at the location, and some are dedicated spaces for specific types of tasks, like clerical or management workers. Very few actual closed offices, everything is a now traditional divider system with 5' or taller dividers. It's surprisingly quiet, but not silent.
Near me there is a group that 'hot-bunks', having multiple shifts working, and they have up to 9 names on 6 seats in a row. Between you and me, they could lose the extra people and lose anything at all, but that's not my call.
I can't really work at home or telecommute, as I need to collaborate with multiple groups and people on a regular basis, and they need me as well. We have one team member that does work at home, and he's perhaps the most productive member, but that's because he's been here since the 1800s, or so it seems, and knows everything.
We were subjected to a 'restack' a while ago, getting cubes shortened by 2 ft and losing some privacy walls. This was entirely a real estate decision, to stuff more people into the space instead of continuing to lease a space elsewhere. For the cost of some space, we saw profitability when our competitors were bleeding like pigs. I kept my job. It could be worse.
But I work for an above-average corporation, and I can imagine the life in some of the cube farms I used to visit back when. Ugh.
On the other hand, we are breeding a generation of workers that might not like being tied down to a specific location. I'm getting the impression that some of them don't like being tied down to a specific task either. good luck with that.
Now, my church buddy is getting a new office. He works in a lab, and next year will get a $800 million lab built for him and his team. He does cool stuff. I should have gone into his field, man, what a life. All he has to do is explain why his employer is either making or losing billions a year. Piece o' cake.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So what happens when the increasingly obese population grows to the full size of the shrinking cubicle? I predict a new cottage industry of cubicle insertion/evacuation engineers equipped with Texas-sized shoe-horn-like instruments, bungie cords, and winces to help pop people into and out of their offices each day; it would help avoid fixing the problem(s).
If Corporate America is is pained by the floorspace taken up by IT staff, then why will they STILL not let me telecommute? They could reduce office space, reduce my carbon footprint and get government incentives to boot. I think they just like torturing us.
This alone is enough to keep Dilbert complaining until Scott Adams finally decides to retire.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Amazing how people will justify whatever they want.
No brain, no pain.
How do you explain the fowl smell?
No brain, no pain.
As soon as neural interfaces become a reality, employees will be farmed and kept in pods in huge brainpower harvesting farms.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-09-15/
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
"...cubicles have shrunk to ... 49 feet".
That *is* small.
Once technology catches up they'll be able to sit us single file. Think about it, the computer is almost gone from the desktop and and the monitor is a fraction of it's former volume. Once we all have digital glasses on our eyes and no noise from the out side earphones on our ears it could very *feel* that we are working alone on top of Mount Everest, the beach, Mars, wherever. But then do we really even need to be in the office? Some managers will still think so and we'll all be sitting in a stripped down warehouse in orderly rows and columns.
"effective office" cubicle is an oxymoron. There have been many studies over the years that show that open office spaces are counter-productive. The book, Peopleware, by DeMarco and Lister covers this and other topics, related to the management of knowledge workers. At the time Peopleware was written, DeMarco and Lister couldn't find a single productivity study that supported the installation of cubicles.
People not found at their desks are often practicing the productivity enhancement called, "hiding from the boss". It is often the only way to get work done around a micro-manager.
People are leaving the field of Computer Science. Why would you spend 4 to 6 (or 7 for those of you who are slow...) years getting a BS or MS in CiS to sit in a cube like a damn secretary? In the same time you can get a degree in law, psychology, psychiatry many interesting fields that don't change every 3 to 6 months and throw you out the door when you make more than $100K or get over 45 years old. In fact some of those professions actually pay you more and you're even more sought after when you're older and wiser! CS eats it's elders!! CS is dying in the US and this is another reason why. Who wants a job that's no more respected than the 20 year old admin that's blowing the boss every afternoon.
I've been at this for 20 years and I make great money and sit in a nice office but I'm the exception not the rule. I tell anyone out there seeking career advice, stay out of Computer Science, It's a sucky career for the majority of people and as far as a career you can retire from? Forget about it! Don't believe me? How many 63 year old programmers work for your company? How many 63 year old accounts? Get it...
You all may be interested in a high school with no walls.
Williamsville East is unique for having open classrooms, being constructed without any interior walls on the upper two floors of the three-story building.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
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.
I work for an attorney specializing in real estate in the US. Sometimes I feel like our services are completely unnecessary, but when I read things like this I'm reminded that we can sometimes be useful.
Do attorneys get involved in real estate over there?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Dilbert strips on shrinking cubicle topic:
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/1991-06-17/
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/1995-04-08/
Wow, you Americans now have one-dimensional cubicles now? Well, if they fit...
I'm pushing for a permanent work at home program for my team. To heck with my 36sq ft area, I want 675 with a stereo system and personal lab environment.
What's this "could" hit 50 square feet? I've already got less than that.
Everyone on my team, from the techs to team leads, managers, and directors, all have the same setup. A slightly bullet-shaped pod (the line down the middle zig-zags), about 7 feet wide by 5 feet deep (7 feet deep at the longest point, the center of the bullet).
The only thing that distinguishes the "higher" positions are additions of personal filing cabinet/shelf/closet combination units.
Yes, this is a call center design. It works fine, nonetheless.
I've had this idea for a while - why not exploit the third dimension. Bunk desks - they're the answer!
...
Or you could just divide the entire floor horizontally. Remember the "half-a-floor" office in Being John Malkovich?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
My new cube is half again as big as my old one, and my boss has a cube the size of a freight car. (All his furniture is huddled at one end. You could square-dance in the open space.)
Of course, the company has gotten a lot smaller this year. I'm thinking this is an unexpected benefit of a down economy.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Geez, what I would give for 50 sq ft of cubical space. My "cublicle" is 6 ft wide by just over 6.5 feet long. I have an L-shaped workspace that is 2 feet deep, by the entire length of 2 sides, which takes up about 22 sq ft of my 40ish sq ft of space. also notes, my cubical only has a full height dividing wall between me and the person next to me, in front of my and on the other side I have walls that come up to my waist when standing.
Yes - this is where it is headed. Squeezing workers closer and closer together is inefficient, they rub shoulders, make noise, and generally distract each other. And then there is all that wasted vertical space.
The answer is the Office Pod (designed in Japan, made in China). Upon arriving at the office you step into your personal office pod, which is then sealed and lifted into place in the huge three-dimensional Pod Lattice. Break and restroom facilities will be efficiently used since you will be moved to the appropriate area and discharged from your cubicle at your scheduled time (and break and bathroom time is kept strictly regulated for maximum efficiency).
Workers, especially younger workers, will actually enjoy becoming a Pod Worker. Honest.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
As long as the office furniture keeps pace with technology. Basically from the synopsis, people have gone from 8x8 cubicles to 7x7. Since flat panels have pretty much taken over for CRT's, the loss of one foot of space in either direction isn't that big a deal, as long as the table space has shrunk accordingly. Basically, the cubicle worker hasn't lost much usable space.
IANAL... But I play one on
It's amazing how many wild-eyed responses there are to this thread.
By way of background, I manage a medium sized IT company, *and* we use
cubicles, *and* management is in cubicles too, *and* I have an ownership
interest in our building. So I see this issue from every possible angle...
First, cubicles aren't bad. They do foster teamwork. They also require
cooperation - keep the noise down, install acoustic tile ceilings and carpets
to absorb the noise, have lots of windows around to make the space sunny, etc.
This isn't rocket science guys.
Second, if you need some "alone" time to work, either go sit in a meeting room
or put on some headphones. We encourage people to do either one as required. It
goes without saying that you have to provide meeting/privacy rooms and be happy
to see your employees listening to their favorite music with earphones/buds/plugs
as the boss wanders by.
Third, standardize. Management should use the exact same desks as employees.
There is exactly one person in our company with a physical office, and she runs
HR. Nope - it's not the CEO (standard cube) or any other manager.
Fourth, it's all about cost, not egos or any other bullshit. Keeping real estate
cost down is good for the bottom line and even (gasp!) good for the environment.
Finally, keep it in perspective. Offices I've visited in Japan and in China, full of IT workers, have a normal "cubicle" that is actually just 4 feet by 2 feet of desk space. No walls. 500 people in a large, open floor. And they're all *quiet* because anything else would create the effect of a bus station. If you include floor space for the chair and aisle behind it, that's about 16 square feet per "cubicle."
My cubicle of about 25 sqft seems palatial by comparison. 50 sqft per employee seems to me to be downright wasteful.
Keep it in perspective.. :-)
btw, typing this from my cube at work, since it's now much quieter here ;0.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Americans getting bigger cars, and smaller workspaces. I think we've shown by our aversion to mass transit and car-pooling that most of us would rather have our own private space, rather than shared common area.
maybe the cubicles were in the pool
As an Outside consultant I have had some tiny work spaces. The client often appears to feel that since we are not normal employees they do not need to treat us well. I have been shown a glorified closest, 2 Feet by 3 feet, with a old plastic milk crate to sit on (I was told my laptop could rest on my lap) - contract duration 3 months at 8-10 hours a day. Another office I was with a team - 16 consultant all around a 4 X 8 foot table in 10 X 12 recently vacated office. Due to security reasons one client required we only use their supplied computers - 10-15 year old ones with the latest version of Windows and office install on them - I was happy to bill them the 30-40 minutes it took to start the computer up every morning and the ~20-30 minutes to shut it down at the end of the day (night time shut down was required).
Over the years I have come to see how poorly the non-employee can be treated with respect to office space - by bag often included wireless routers and other items so I could leave my work space and find a more suitable work environment.
but since you are not a regular employee you seem be exempt from any sort of labor laws.
Some companies, or departments in companies do allow generous telecommuting from home.
Then the cubicle size matters less, and possibly would allow companies to have _larger_ cubicles for the few times an employee needs to use one (aka hotel-ing a workspace).
I only need to go to the office on Mondays in my current department. I telecommute the rest. It rocks.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I think that there is a bit of mixing measures going on here.
One of the figures people use for planning purposes is the total floor space per personfor a particular floor plate layout. Basically you measure the total space of the floor, and divide it by the number of people you want to accomodate. This figure includes stairwells, corridors, toilets, meeting rooms, reception, etc. It does not equate to the amount of space dedicated per employee for their sole use.
If you work it out, the 500 square feet per person would work out to an area 13 metres by 13 metres per person. If someone gave me a cube that big I'd bring friends in to work just for someone within earshot.
... the noise - you get to hear all the details of everyone's conversations. And as if having to listen to everyone else's conversations isn't bad enough, you also have the assholes who feel the need to conduct every conversation on the goddamn speakerphone! It used to drive me insane.
In other news, workers are becoming less productive, companies complain about ever-higher turnover rates and total lack of loyalty to the employer, and workers are more ill and suffer more stress, and that trend is expected to continue until at least 2015.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I have several co-workers, some who work in an semi-open plan office (essentially a bench against a wall with a few tiny airless offices that no one uses), and three remote home workers, including myself.
Without a doubt, the amount of usefulhigh quality work that the remote workers pull off is amazing. The boss noticed, and got two of the guys to do a time and motion study using a 5 minute interval to record what they were working on. The office guys struggle to do 90 minutes a day in billable work, and their work suffers for it. I can easily put in an eight hour day, and produce higher quality work than my on-site co-workers can in a week. Sometimes I trade this for a /. session, but most of the time I do high quality work.
For collaboration, we use Skype.
There are downsides. I get cabin fever regularly. I am somewhat distant to many of my friends, and not seeing them is a hassle. My boss doesn't see my efforts, and thus I tend to get more work than many of co-workers, primarily because I can deliver. Family time often disturb me, even though I've made it perfectly clear that if I was working in an office, I couldn't run down the shops or look after baby girl for an hour or so. This leads to working after hours to catch up occasionally. I'm still to work out this issue despite coming up on two years of working from home.
If you decide to abandon the cubicle rat race, here's my tips:
* Your home office has to be away from distractions. You're not going to win if you're in front of folks watching Dr Phil. I have a separate office with about 200 square feet of space.
* Your own music all the time at whatever volume you want is the birth right of the home worker. Get a good amp and speakers and crank it up baby!
* Communicate at least a few times every day with your boss. No surprises is the best policy. They buy in to your work and deliverable rather than demanding results and wondering where they are.
* Set up your home office properly. Sitting at a kitchen table or coffee shop sounds nice until you've been hunched over your laptop for three hours on a crappy chair.
* Get a big ass monitor even if you have a 17" laptop screen. Your eyes will thank you. Ditto high quality external keyboard and mouse.
* I bought a fax / printer. Waste of money. Do not want.
* Reliable communications is all. Have a backup plan such as a 3G dongle in case your primary net access goes down.
I think I'm broken of the cubicle habit now. It's going to be tricky to stay home for the next 25 years of my working life, but I want to do so. Cubicle life - good riddance.
Andrew van der Stock
Our code is produced by nerds who have access to open pasture and are fed nothing but organic sushi.
... would be a solution to the desire to pay for less real-estate.
(Not to mention alleviating a whole lot of cars on the roads. But we get tax breaks for the Coal-Fired Chevy Volt instead?)
Add videoconferencing for the "need to see/be seen".
It's way cheaper than building rent.
(Disclaimer: My employer sells such gear. And it works.)
+++OK ATH
This may (should) trigger an honest investigation into air quality in offices. Fresh air exchange rates in zoning law are likely all wrong.
Perfume triggers migraines in about as many people as peanuts trigger allergic reactions. Many perfumes contain chemicals known to cause cancer with MUCH more certainty than second hand smoke.
We are worried about chickens living in crowded conditions but not our employees....
I once saw video of a turkey farm that was hit by a virus outbreak. They had to kill millions of birds... what is an employer to do?
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Seating on planes is also shrinking so business travel is now far more intimate.
People get used to it.
We also no longer need to spend so much money to put these cheap souls under a roof in the business world.
The cattle and chicken industries have shown us the way.
Better get to the doctor, quickly!
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
My KINGDOM for a cubicle. I currently have to try writing code, working with products, etc. in an open plan area of around 200 people. Some of these people are coders and engineers, and that's fine. Some of them are first or second line ops, and they're on the phone all day. That's less fine. Some of them are customer relationship types and not only are they on the phone all day, they're jovial and loud.
And that's in a large firm with money to spend. I'm guessing that small companies with savings targets are even harder to survive.
>cubicles have shrunk from an average of 64 feet to 49 feet in recent years Ok, where do I apply to get a 49' cubical? if that's square feet, I'm severly lacking! I estimate my square footage to be around 25 sq ft, if you count half the isle! if that's cubic feet, the I guess I should be releaved, since I have a whopping 200 cubic feet of space to call my own, while I'm at work. When I leave the office, anyone else can use the desk, so my personal space is reduced to a small drawer, that doesn't lock. On the plus side, I do hold a key to the server room, that has about 200 square feet of open space.
Hey, do you work here? I'm in a similar place, though once I managed to trade seats with someone so I wasn't *right* next to tech support, it got much more tolerable. I don't honestly mind sitting out in the open with the rest of dev and QA on my team - in fact, I think I'd prefer it to having to sit in a cramped cubicle all day - but when I was sitting right next to tech support, I definitely had to tell them to shut up a few times. (Though I did get to listen to a few great this-customer-is-a-moron conversations).